


Stormlight

by celinamarniss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Abusive Mentor, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Close Quarters, F/M, Force Woo, Gaslighting, Light BDSM, Light Bondage, Pining, Role Reversal, Ruin It Differently, Violence, questionable decision making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:34:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 60,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26228746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celinamarniss/pseuds/celinamarniss
Summary: The command lanced through his head like a blaster bolt, bright and painful, as he fought back the powerful urge to blast out of the atmosphere, enter hyperspace, and search out Mara wherever she was now.YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.A retelling of the Thrawn Trilogy in which Luke receives Palpatine's Last Command, not Mara.
Relationships: Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 213
Kudos: 131





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> It took a tiny fandom to raise this fic.
> 
> This fic originated with a post JediMordSith made on tumblr a while back asking for a fic in which Luke, not Mara, is implanted with the Emperor's Last Command. It might not have been a new concept, but it was her prompt that inspired frangipani and I to gleefully run with the idea, outlining the bones of an entire fic together. Both of us swore that we didn't have time to write it, but the idea latched on to me and didn't let go. 
> 
> threadsketchier kindly helped beat my prologue into shape. atamascolily was another generous sounding board on Force woo issues. JediMordSith and evilmouse volunteered to beta, encouraged me to continue, and listened to me whine my way through many chapters. Without them, this fic wouldn't exist.   
> All my gratitude to the fic whining circle. Thank you. This is for you, friends.
> 
>   
> This fic is a remix of the Thrawn Trilogy, and fragments of dialogue have been taken from _Dark Force Rising_ and _The Last Command_ and tweaked to fit this alternate take. Those words are Timothy Zahn's, not mine, though they've been altered to fit my story. 
> 
> If it's been a long time since you read the Trilogy, I recommend scanning the summaries on wookieepedia. I skip over large chunks of plot in order to focus on Luke's story. The prologue starts at the end of _Heir to the Empire,_ and picks up again in the next chapter midway through _Dark Force Rising._ There will be other time jumps throughout the story.

They left Myrkr in a hurry. 

Only a few ships were left on-planet by the time Han and Lando were hustled up the _Wild Karrde’s_ loading ramp into the hold. They’d been delayed in Hyllyard City while Lando was being patched by a medic from Karrde’s camp, and by the time they made it back to the smuggler’s base, Karrde had already sent the _Falcon_ up into orbit with the rest of his fleet of ships. Han _wasn’t_ happy about that, but he supposed it was better than leaving the _Falcon_ exposed to Thrawn’s troops if they hadn’t made it back in time. Around them Karrde’s crew packed up the last bits of equipment that had once made up a formidable base of operations—the base of operations for a smuggling empire that had been operating under the radar of the New Republic since Endor. 

They were efficient, too, as quick and competent as any Rebellion crew, weaving around the small fighters and shuttles parked in the _Karrde’s_ large hold as they stacked crates along the walls. Probably _more_ organized than a few Rebel bases he could recall. It was clear that Karrde ran a tight ship and Han was impressed in spite of himself. 

There were a few of those lizard-things—ysalamiri?—in frames leaning against the far side of the hangar, and Han watched a crewman secure the frames for takeoff on a set of hooks that had been retrofitted onto the hold wall. He wasn’t entirely sure what Karrde wanted with a supply of Force-dampening creatures; there was more going on here than the smuggler was letting on, and Han hadn’t worked it all out yet. 

As the cargo hold’s loading ramp lifted and sealed shut in preparation for take-off, the man himself entered the hold and headed towards them, Luke and Mara Jade trailing in his wake. Although no one saluted or otherwise acknowledged Karrde’s presence, Han sensed a familiar ripple of attention move across the deck. The Captain was present, and everyone was aware of it. 

When they’d first seen him in Hyllyard City, Luke’s face had been swollen and blistered by a reaction to some local plant, but the swelling had gone down and his face had returned to less horrific proportions—for the most part—though he and Jade both looked as though they’d been dragged through the mud by a pair of angry Rancors. Luke had red welts running across his forehead and cheek, and the shoulders of Jade’s flight suit were torn as though some large creature had clawed at her. He could see bandages through the exposed holes. She had deep shadows under her eyes and was limping a bit, too, but she’d lost the venomous glare she’d had when Karrde had first introduced her back on the base, and she no longer gave off the impression that she might just haul off and shoot anyone who looked at her funny. 

“Hey kid, you along for the ride, too?” 

Luke nodded. “Artoo and I were planning to go with you once we got off Myrkr. Karrde’s agreed to drop my X-Wing off at a NR base.” 

_“If_ we’d had some time to prep the _Falcon_ before we left, we could have rigged a tow line for your X-wing.”

“My apologies,” Karrde said, sounding completely unapologetic. “There wasn’t the time. I assure you, Torve is a capable captain and will return the _Falcon_ to you unscathed.” 

His Second was quick to back up her Captain’s assurances. “We’ll return your ship as soon as we confirm that all our people are clear of the Imperials.” 

“I know, I’m not worried about it.” Luke smiled—smiled!—over at her. 

Han raised his eyebrows at Lando. He _thought_ that she’d wanted to kill Luke. He waved a hand between Jade and himself and Lando. “We’re all friends here now?” 

Her eyes narrowed. 

“I trust Mara,” Luke said quickly. “We had a lot to talk about during our walk through the forest. We’ve settled things.” 

“Must have been _some_ talk,” Han said. 

_There_ was the sort of glare he’d come to expect from Jade, though it still didn’t have the same intensity that he’d seen her call on earlier. 

The _Karrde’s_ engines fired and Han steadied Lando as the ship lifted up. They all braced as the freighter climbed into the planet’s sky. 

“I’m looking forward to breaking atmo again,” Luke said. 

He shot Jade a crooked smile as he said this, but she just blinked back at him, giving nothing away except for a faint expression of guarded surprise she wore in his presence. It was an expression that Han knew well, the look of someone who’d been smacked in the face with the full brunt of that Luke Skywalker enthusiasm and didn’t know how to process it yet. 

“The ysalamiri block our perception of the Force,” Luke told him, which lined up with what Karrde had told them. “Large groups create a larger bubble, so I haven’t been able to touch the Force since we landed on Myrkr.” 

“Welcome to the world the rest of us have to deal with,” Han said. He glanced at Jade; he hadn’t missed the use of _our._

Luke rolled his eyes. “I was already aware, Han, remember, I—” 

Luke stopped abruptly mid-sentence, and jerked, flinching as though he’d been startled by a sound no one else could hear. A Jedi thing, probably, Han figured, his hand on his blaster a moment after Luke had moved. He knew better than to ignore it when Luke got one of his bad feelings. 

“Hey kid, what’s up?” he said, trying to sound casual about it so he didn’t alert the entire hangar. 

Luke ignored him, turning slowly toward Jade. 

Han caught a glimpse of Jade, eyes wide, staring back at Luke as though she’d heard the same soundless alarm, and then the bright flash of Luke’s lightsaber cut through the space where she’d been standing. 

Han shouted in surprise, pulling his blaster on instinct. Around him, he heard similar exclamations of shock. 

Jade had just barely escaped the blow, ducking under it and throwing herself at Luke. Han couldn’t see exactly what she did, but Luke shouted and dropped the lightsaber, which Jade kicked across the deck. Before she could move out of reach, he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her across the floor of the hangar, smashing her head against the side of a shuttle. Jade crumpled to the ground. 

“Luke!” Han shouted. “Luke! What’s going on?” 

Luke turned, scanning the hangar floor for his lightsaber. It had rolled to the far end of the hangar, coming to a stop in front of one of those ysalamir frames. He raised his hand, a gesture Han had seen many times before, but the lightsaber failed to fly across the room as it usually did. It didn’t even twitch. A look of irritation crossed Luke’s face. 

“Skywalker!” Karrde’s voice rang out above the startled shouts of his men. “Don’t make another move.” 

Luke looked over at Han, seemingly oblivious to the blasters Karrde’s smugglers were drawing weapons on him. “I have to kill her,” he said matter-of-factly. 

“Why? What the hell’s going on?” Had he anticipated some sort of betrayal on Jade’s part? Only minutes ago he’d acted as though she was his new best friend! 

“I have to kill her,” Luke repeated simply, as though cold-blooded murder was only a matter of course. Jade had taken advantage of the distraction to scuttle under the nose of the shuttle and Luke dived after her. 

There was a chorus of shouts and the thumping of boots on durasteel as everyone scrambled around the shuttle to follow them. Han cleared the corner of the shuttle just in time to see Jade dart in close to Luke, catching the arm he’d thrown out and landing a blow to his chin. His head snapped back and he staggered to the side—and Han realized she’d nearly kicked out his left knee. 

She was fast and vicious—better at hand to hand than Luke, that was clear, but she was smaller than he was, and already wounded. Blood was pouring down the side of her head where Luke had slammed it into the shuttle, and her back was spotted with blood where the bandages covering the claw marks had scraped away in the scuffle. 

Han could hear Karrde barking out orders to his crew—ordering them to move in on the brawling pair but not to shoot, and calling for a medic as Luke flung Jade to the floor of the hold. 

One of Karrde’s men, a large Berchestian, tried to tackle Luke as he approached Jade. Luke ducked, swung a leg up and kicked the man aside. Jade had slithered over to a pile of equipment and heaved herself up again. She caught hold of a large can and flung it toward Luke, who merely raised a hand and used the Force to deflect it in another direction like brushing away a fly. Several of Karrde’s men, who had been approaching Luke from the side, had to duck as the can sailed over their heads and split open on the deck. Oil splashed across the floor, rendering a large section of the hangar impassable. The smugglers who were trying to move in on the fight from that direction let out a series of colorful curses. 

From the distance and angle, Han didn’t see what she did next, but in the next minute Luke was on the floor. She was fumbling at her wrist as he struck back, lashing out from the ground, managing to hook his arm around her ankle and yank her off her feet, even though she’d braced herself for an attack. He was on his feet again as she rolled out of his reach. 

Luke was on top of her in a second, pinning her to the floor with a knee in her stomach. Her arm came up, a tiny blaster appearing in her hand. Luke twisted to avoid the point-blank shot, which blazed by his head and disappeared into the ceiling of the hold. He caught her wrist, bending it back with a sickening crack until the blaster fell from her fingers. She shrieked in pain, her other hand whipping up to claw at his face; Luke only grunted and leaned out of her reach. 

Han saw his opening and darted forward, grabbing Luke by the arm. “Luke, stop—”

He didn’t get another word out. 

He felt himself lifted bodily in the air and flung to the side; he hit the deck hard and lay gasping for a moment, trying to comprehend what had happened. Luke hadn’t even touched him. He’d done it all with the Force. 

Luke—Luke wouldn’t have done that to him. It was _wrong._ Everything about this was wrong. 

There was another crash and a shout and Han twisted around to see what had happened. 

Jade had somehow slipped out of Luke’s grasp again, and gotten hold of a long wrench, which she swung at him in a wide, sloppy arc. She held her broken wrist tight to her body and it was clear that she was flagging, her face tight with pain. Luke ducked backward, improbably fast, dancing back a few feet. He waved his hand and the wrench shot out of her grip and flew across the room, crashing into a crate on the other side of the room. 

It was the Force—it had to have something to do with the Force. Luke would _never_ have done that to him. 

“Karrde!” he shouted. “The ysalamiri!” 

Comprehension dawned on Karrde’s face, and he snapped orders at his men. One of his lackeys raced back over to a ysalamir frame and dragged it across the hangar toward the fight.

Luke had cornered Jade again and this time Han wasn’t sure she’d be able to fight her way out of his grip. Her good arm was flailing in the air, beating ineffectually at his head as he forced her to the floor. 

Han could tell the instant the ysalamir’s strange power touched Luke. His whole body stiffened, his face contorting in horror. He scrambled off of Jade, flinging himself away from her. 

Karrde’s men were on him in an instant. 

Luke didn’t resist, didn’t even move to block the fist that came at his face and the boot to his side as the men dragged him away from Jade and pinned him to the floor of the hangar. Two of Karrde’s men hovered over her; someone was shouting for the medic. 

Han was on his feet again, heading toward Luke, when someone with a firm grip grabbed hold of his arm and brought him to an abrupt stop. Before he could react, his blaster was yanked from his hand and two of Karrde’s men restrained him in place. 

“Kriff! What the—Karrde!” He tried to jerk out of their grasp, but couldn’t manage to break the Berchestian’s hold. He hadn’t even seen Karrde signal his men. They’d gotten hold of Lando, too, though his friend wasn’t struggling, just watching the scene carefully, a dark look on his face. 

Karrde walked across the deck to Jade, who was rising shakily to her feet, her broken wrist held close to her chest. He unholstered his blaster, pressed it into her uninjured hand, and stepped back. 

“Karrde, you can’t!” Han shouted. “Luke’s out of his head. Something’s wrong with him. You can’t kill a man who doesn’t even know what he did!” 

Jade stared at Karrde, as taken aback by his gesture as Han was. 

“Karrde, ” Lando said, his voice low and tense. “Take a moment to think about this! That’s _Luke Skywalker._ You kill him, and you’ll be going to war with the _entire_ new Republic. There’s no going back from this. Are you willing to put your entire operation at risk over this?” 

“I’m aware of the stakes, Calrissian.” Karrde had his gaze fixed on Jade. The side of her face was red with blood. She blinked, her brow furrowed, and looked down at the blaster. Head trauma. She needed a medic. 

“Mara?” he heard Karrde say softly, and she straightened, adjusted her grip on the blaster, and limped over to where Luke was still being held. The men holding him down backed away at her approach. Luke fell flat onto the ground, staring up at Jade. 

“Karrde, you son of bitch, you can’t do this!” One of the men restraining Han smacked the back of his head for shouting at their boss. 

“It’s Mara’s choice,” Karrde said, ignoring Han. “If she wants Skywalker to pay for what he did to her, he dies.” 

Jade raised the blaster. The hold fell silent as she aimed the blaster at Luke’s head, the weapon wavering as her hand shook. She still wouldn’t miss at that range. 

Han tried to wrench his shoulder free, but the smuggler restraining him just dug his fingers tighter into Han’s arm. He couldn’t believe that after all they’ve been through that it would end up like this—Luke shot dead on the dirty floor of a smuggler’s hold.

_What was he going to tell Leia?_

But she didn’t shoot. 

“Why?” she rasped, the low growl loud in the hushed hold. 

“I don’t know,” Luke said. His face had lost all color and even at a distance, Han could tell he was shaking as well. “I can’t explain.” 

_“Why?”_

“I couldn’t think—” he babbled, his voice rough and wavering. “The Force—all I could hear was a command—in the Emperor’s voice—I couldn’t stop...” 

He trailed off. Time seemed to stretch out as Luke lay unmoving under the blaster’s muzzle. 

Then her arm dropped and she sagged, Karrde catching her as she swayed on her feet. He passed her off to one of his men and a medic who had been hovering nearby, and they helped her limp out of the hold. 

Karrde’s men released him and Lando, though they didn’t return their weapons. Han was aware that they were being closely watched for any signs that they might try to interfere. 

“Dankin, secure Skywalker in storage room 5.” Karrde’s voice rang through the hold. “Make sure he’s restrained and has a ysalamir frame with him at all times. Place ysalamiri in the surrounding rooms, too. Wear the frame when you escort him to Captain Solo’s ship. You won’t cause any more trouble for us, will you, Skywalker?” 

Luke shook his head, and allowed himself to be dragged away. 


	2. Chapter 2

_Master C’baoth?_ Luke called through the Force. _Master C’baoth, can you hear me? Are you there?_

If Master C’baoth could hear Luke’s greeting, he made no answer. 

The planet below was spattered with islands, green shapes like flimsiplast-cutouts scattered across a deep blue sphere. A storm was swirling in the northern hemisphere, bright flashes of lightning flickering through the dark, churning clouds. 

The largest island was the planet’s only continent, a dark volcanic landmass in the southern hemisphere that looked small through the canopy of Luke’s X-wing. Habitation was limited to tiny, relatively undeveloped communities along the coastlines and around the lake in the center of the largest island.

Jomark was the perfect place for a Jedi Master who wanted to get away from it all. Luke could sense C’baoth’s presence, hidden somewhere on the planet, but he couldn’t pinpoint his location without guidance, which wasn’t forthcoming. 

He tried one last time. _Master C’baoth?_ _This is Luke Skywalker. Can you hear me?_

Was C’baoth’s silence a test? The first test of many, he assumed, thinking back to how Yoda had tested him when he first landed on Dagobah; a test he had failed. He didn’t want to fail this time, though he wasn’t entirely sure if this was the Jedi Master’s first trial, or if there was another reason C’baoth couldn’t or wouldn’t respond. 

When he’d first heard rumors that another Jedi master had survived the Jedi purge, he’d been curious about the man, eager to seek him out and discuss his dream of founding a new Jedi Order with the sole known surviving master of the old. The opportunity to learn new training techniques alone would be invaluable. Both of his mentors were gone, and the few Force-sensitives he’d met in the last few years had passed in and out of his life.

And then—Mindor. Thousands of Force-sensitives had died at his hand, a disaster that had shattered his confidence and made him even more sharply aware of how alone he was; how small the chance that he might actually achieve his dream of gathering together a community of Force-sensitives and rebuilding the lost culture of the Jedi. 

For a brief moment on Myrkr, he had hope he wasn’t so alone after all. Mara was proof that there were others out there like him, who had been deprived of their true connection to the Force, and who might be willing to join him. He had hoped that Mara would be one of them. 

After Myrkr, the need to seek out C’baoth was no longer something that could possibly be put aside. He’d come very close to killing Mara. Before anything else happened, he needed to find someone who knew enough about the Force to root the compulsion to murder her out of his head. He’d tried to ask his former mentors first, calling out in the Force for guidance, but as Obi-wan had promised, they had moved beyond means of communication. There simply wasn’t anyone else he could ask for help. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The command lanced through his head like a blaster bolt, bright and painful. His hand spasmed on the yoke, the X-Wing shivering as he fought for control—as he fought back the powerful urge to blast out of the atmosphere, enter hyperspace, and search out Mara wherever she was now. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

The command hammered a relentless tattoo against the inside of his head. A voice that told him that he should kill her—he _must_ kill her— _killing her was more important than anything else else in the galaxy._ A voice he was sure he recognized—

Sucking in a deep breath, Luke focused all his attention on pulling air in and out of his lungs, his vision locked on the blue curve of the planet below him. Eventually, the command faded; the compulsion dulling as the voice grew quiet. It was never really gone—it remained like a static hum at the back of his head, dialed down to a point where it wouldn’t overwhelm him. The only thing that stopped it entirely was a ysalamiri’s Force-null bubble. 

It had taken time to convince anyone, even Han, that Mara, and Mara alone, was the trigger. 

She had disappeared along with the rest of Karrde’s organization, vanishing back into the Fringe without any indication of where they might have gone. Since leaving Myrkr, Karrde had gained a death mark, courtesy of Thrawn, but as far as Lando’s sources knew, he’d avoided any assassination attempts. 

Of Mara, there was no news at all. 

Luke had hoped that distance would help; hoped that if he never saw her again he would never be overwhelmed by the urge to murder her in cold blood—but the voice persisted, slashing through his thoughts with increasing frequency, and with a disturbing resistance to any Jedi calming techniques that he’d been trained to use. He wondered, as he had over the past few weeks, if his connection to the Force was actually amplifying the compulsion. 

Then the nightmares had begun. 

He was back on Myrkr, hiking through the forest with Mara slightly behind him, just like they’d done only a month ago. In the dream, he’d used the Force to snatch his lightsaber off of Mara’s belt and turn it on her. She stumbled back, fumbling for her small holdout blaster, but he’d slammed her against a tree and driven the lightsaber through her chest. The smell of charred flesh burned in his nose as watched the light go out of her bright green eyes. 

The next night, he was hunting her through Karrde’s base, his mind building rooms and passageways he hadn’t actually seen while he was there. He could sense her fleeing from room to room through the base, and as in the previous dream, his ability to use the Force wasn’t inhibited by Myrkr’s ysalamiri. No matter where she tried to run, he could find her, and he always caught her. 

Then she’d begun to appear in places she’d never been: on Hoth—he’d shot her in the stomach and let her bleed out into the snow. In his apartment on Coruscant—after he’d run through her with his lightsaber, he’d used the Force to throw her through the window, watching as her body fell and fell until it disappeared into the dark. 

Sometimes he could sense the Emperor lurking somewhere, on the edges of the dream, his presence like a rank smell lingering in whatever setting his mind had chosen that night. Luke was almost certain it was Palpatine’s voice ringing through his head, though he didn’t know how the Emperor—dead for nearly five years now—had managed to plant the command in his head. The only thing that silenced the voice and kept his nightmares at bay was cutting himself off from the Force entirely. 

Karrde had insisted that Luke leave the _Wild Karrde_ with a ysalamir strapped to his back. He’d put the strange, sessile lizard in his meditation room on Coruscant as an emergency measure and taken to sleeping there to keep the dreams out of his head. If he didn’t find a way to get the command out of his head he supposed he could sequester himself somewhere permanently within a ysalamir-protected zone, but it was a solution he didn’t want to consider just yet. 

A concerned whistle cut through his brooding, worried questions about his operating status scrolling down the monitor in glowing aurebesh. 

“It’s okay, Artoo. Just—just a Jedi thing. I’m fine now.” 

This response earned him a worldless _blat._

Correcting the X-Wing’s course, he began his descent toward the largest island; toward the brilliant blue ring of a lake in the center of a volcanic crater. Lush forests covered the steep slopes of the mountainous terrain he flew over, but he saw little sign of sentient development until he reached the lake. A small fortress had been built on a crag above a village that lined the shore on the far side of the lake.

Artoo expressed concerns in a series of mournful warbles but Luke guided the X-wing down a few meters from the front gate of the courtyard to the fortress. It was a large, squat building, built in an alien style of architecture that Luke didn’t recognize. The dark grey stone walls looked nearly black in the shadow of the cliffs above. The walls were stained and crumbling in places, although the large wooden gate looked secure enough to withstand an assault. There was something about the structure—the way it seemed to crouch in the shadows of the cliff, as though it were waiting for something—that dredged up an instinctive feeling of dread deep from within him. 

_It’s only a building,_ he thought, brushing away the foreboding feeling that sunk to the bottom of his stomach. 

By the time he had powered down his X-wing and climbed down the side of the ship, a figure was standing by the large gate that led to the courtyard. It was an older man, with a grey-white beard and long hair loose in the wind that gusted across the lake. He was tall, his posture straight and proud, and Luke felt his spirits lift at the sight of the familiar brown robes he wore. 

“Master C’baoth,” he said, bowing to the Jedi master. “I’m Luke Skywalker.” 

* * *

Luke sat with his legs crossed and hands lying still on his thighs. The floor of C’baoth’s meditation room was covered with a mat woven from thick, long grasses and dyed a deep red. The lights had been set to their dimmest setting, and clusters of candles throughout the room offered a warm, flickering glow. The Jedi Master sat across from Luke, facing him, the calm expression on his lined face betraying no sign of emotion. 

“Let us begin,” C’baoth said, and Luke let his eyes fall shut. 

For the first time since Myrkr, he felt himself relax, letting go of the tension that wound through him and easing himself into the flow of the Force. Since the compulsion itself was linked to his connection with the Force, rooted somewhere deep in his own mind, he’d been reluctant to completely submerge himself in meditation for fear of letting the command take control again. 

“We will trace the compulsion back to its source in your mind,” C’baoth said, his voice a soothing rumble. “Open yourself to me.” 

Luke let his last grasp on the world around him slip away as he sunk deeper into the Force. C’baoth’s presence was a warm, steady glow, beckoning him closer, and he reached out until he could feel the Jedi Master at the threshold of his mind. The connection between them solidified and strengthened enough for C’baoth to follow Luke back through his memories. 

Mara’s face flashed through his mind. He saw her as she’d often been on their trek through Myrkr, the dappled sunlight through the trees playing across her face, her expression intent as she kept her focus on the forest around them. Mara, before he’d attacked her— 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE rang through his head, and suddenly it was as if he were being pulled backward through a dizzying blur of memories that followed a sequence he couldn’t quite track. He felt C’baoth beside him, leading him deeper, further back, until—

He was back on the Death Star, fighting for his life as Vader bore down upon him. 

It was a memory so visceral it felt as though he were living it all over again. He could hear the hum of the Death Star’s engine under the sound of his and Vader’s lightsabers rending the air and crashing together with a staticy scream. Luke was flushed and sweating, his muscles straining as he met Vader’s blows, even as the chill of the dark side, which seemed to saturate the throne room, seeped into his bones. 

With the inevitability of memory, he drove Vader to the edge of the core shaft, striking again and again until he’d severed his father’s hand and pinned the Sith against what remained of the railing. As he stood over Vader, he felt the rage drain out of him and the dark side recede, and he stepped away from the battle, tossed his weapon aside and confronted the Emperor. 

What followed was an experience that Luke never wanted to relive—but he was trapped in the memory, in the long moments of agony as Force lightning lanced through his body. The pain went on and on, washing over him—until it came to an abrupt stop. He looked up to see the lightning arching overhead as Vader lifted the Emperor and staggered toward the deep ventilation shaft that flanked the causeway leading to Palpatine’s throne. 

It was as though time slowed down—the moment in which the Emperor disappeared down the shaft stretching out and expanding in his mind’s eye—and in that moment he felt the Sith Lord’s consciousness latch on to his. At the time, he’d barely registered the touch, the brush of the mind to mind quickly forgotten as he was battered by the release of dark power that blasted through the throne room upon Palpatine’s death. 

Now, reliving the moment, he focused on that fraction of an instant in which the Sith had burrowed into his mind, seeding the compulsion deep within his psyche. He was powerless to stop it. All he could do was watch as Palpatine planted the command in the moments before he died. A command that had laid dormant for years, until it was triggered in Myrkr’s atmosphere— 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The Emperor’s voice thundered through his mind, drowning out any other thought, shaking Luke out of the vision of his past until he was aware of nothing but the need to seek out Mara Jade and murder her. 

_“Focus on me, Apprentice Skywalker.”_ C’baoth’s presence wrapped around him like a safety harness in the void, his voice wavering behind the roar of the command like a staticky transmission he had to listen to carefully to make out. “ _Drop your shields. I am here to guide and protect you._ ” 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL… 

He felt the compulsion fade away, muffled by C’baoth’s presence in his mind. For the moment, the voice was quiet, though Luke could tell that C’baoth hadn’t extracted it from his head entirely. It was simply dormant again, as it had been for the last five years, pushed to the edge of his consciousness. 

His vision blurred as he opened his eyes, and he blinked rapidly until his sight was clear. C’baoth was looking back at him, concern on his weathered face. 

“It _was_ the Emperor,” Luke said, his voice shaky. “He did— _something_ —to me.” 

The Jedi Master nodded. “The command was planted right before he died. How ingenious...” 

There was something in his tone that made Luke uneasy. “It’s not just a command, Master C’baoth. I completely lost control around Mara. I couldn’t think of anything else except killing her. Like it… it took over my mind.” 

Han had asked him if he’d blacked out when he’d attacked Mara, if some other consciousness had taken control and was using his body as a vehicle, but it wasn’t like that at all. He’d been completely conscious when the compulsion took hold. He had been aware of his actions, as though the desire to kill Mara was his own. Even though he was still aware that it was wrong, it was if there was a part of him that simply didn’t care. 

An expression Luke couldn’t read flickered on C’baoth’s face. “How ingenious,” he repeated softly. Luke had the brief impression that C’baoth was more impressed by the skill of the technique than concerned with the implications. 

“Have you seen anything like this before?” 

C’baoth shook his head. “Nothing quite like this. A type of Force compulsion,” he mused. “Though one that has persisted after the death of its creator. It was fused to your spirit, almost like a Force bond, though a bond that was done without permission.” 

Luke felt sick. “Can you stop it?” 

“I believe that I can.” C’baoth laid a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “But it will take time. I need to study what has been done first.” 

Luke nodded. He hadn’t expected it to be easy. 

“You should rest,” C’baoth said, his tone gentle but firm. His hand was warm and heavy as it curled around Luke’s shoulder. “Tomorrow we will begin.” 

* * *

Master C’baoth called the fortress on the cliff above the lake the High Castle. It had been built centuries ago by the people of Jomark, though C’baoth admitted that he didn’t know its original purpose, nor did he care to discover the reason it had been built. The village below the castle was called Chynoo. A narrow path wound down the cliff to Chynoo, a modest settlement of about fifty cottages that stood at the edge of the lake. 

C’baoth employed a man from the village to drive him down into Chynoo daily to act as a judge in village disputes, and an elderly woman walked up from the village twice a day to clean and cook for the Jedi Master. This arrangement had been going on for less than a year. Although he seemed to know every villager by name, C’baoth lived alone in the High Castle until Luke had arrived. 

Luke only saw Yoma at meals, when she served him and C’baoth at the long table in the banquet hall. In the evening, the hall was lit by a few free-standing lanterns set by one end of the table, the high ceiling disappearing into the shadows. The walls of the banquet hall were covered in murals, the bright paint transformed into muddy, muted shapes by the dim light. He could make out humanoid figures and animals, acting out a cycle of activities and rituals as they marched across either side of the hall. He had tried to piece together a narrative, but whatever deeper meaning the paintings had held to the inhabitants of the High Castle eluded him. At the far end of the hall, the murals concluded in a maelstrom, dark clouds streaked with lightning covering the walls, all the people and animals swept up into the storm. From where he sat at the table beside C’baoth, the apocalyptic tableau was completely lost in the dark. 

The food that Yoma served was simple and mostly consisted of bland but hearty stews. C’baoth occasionally insinuated that Yoma’s efforts were wanting, but Luke didn’t mind the simplicity of Yoma’s stews. At the time, he had tried to use the comment as an opening to ask C’baoth about daily life in the Jedi Temple, but C’baoth had brushed off his question. 

The bowl that Yoma placed in front of Luke that evening as she bustled around the table was slightly larger than C’baoth’s bowl, and she filled it to the brim. Muttering in an obscure local dialect that Luke couldn’t understand, Yoma pushed a hunk of bread next to his bowl. The bread was reddish, with black seeds and flecks of seaweed sprinkled on top. 

“Thank you, Yoma.” He smiled at her. 

Her wrinkled face creased in a slight grin and she patted his arm before she gathered up the soup pot and ladle. She’d left an extra set of blankets in his room the night before and he had gathered that she was concerned about his health. He did feel like he might be coming down with something, but he didn’t think it was serious. 

As Yoma crossed behind C’baoth, she made a small gesture with her hand that reminded Luke of signs he had seen superstitious beings use to ward off evil spirits. Or it could have been a blessing—he shouldn’t make assumptions about Chynoo traditions. 

The old woman didn’t smile as she ladled soup into C’baoth’s bowl. Luke had observed that she always approached C’baoth with a formality that he never saw in his own interactions with her. Luke didn’t sense fear from her or the other residents of Chynoo, only a deep respect for the Jedi Master that bordered on awe. 

He had to admit he was troubled by the Jedi Master’s autocratic relationship with the village. C’baoth had instructed the villagers to build a pavilion in the center of the village where he could pass judgment over any disputes that arose. He had a throne-like chair made of dark, polished wood and carved with esoteric designs brought down from the High Castle and placed in the pavilion. From the chair he sat above the villagers who came to seek his guidance, using the Force to instruct his ruling in each case that came before him. C’baoth was clearly skilled and powerful, and he did have a genuine passion for justice, but the rulings Luke had witnessed were heavy-handed and occasionally cruel. He never reconsidered a ruling once he had come to a decision. 

“This is the judgment of C’baoth,” he told an unhappy supplicant who had petitioned for a resolution regarding a stolen fishing boat. “It will be carried out immediately. I will not repeat myself.” 

Luke couldn’t dismiss his first experience with C’baoth’s judgment, in a dispute between two village men which had turned violent. While Luke watched, shocked, the Jedi Master had used Force lightning to strike down a villager who, unsatisfied by C’baoth’s ruling, had tried to attack him. 

“He required a lesson,” C’baoth had said. “Pain is the one teacher no one will ignore.” He refused to let Luke tend to the man’s injuries. 

C’baoth had acted in defense, but Luke _knew_ how excruciatingly painful Force lightning could be, and it seemed like an extreme reaction. He didn’t want to undermine C’baoth’s authority, and he was aware that he didn’t know enough about the men involved or the community of Chynoo to feel comfortable intervening, but it was still hard to step back. 

Seated at the head of the table, C’boath watched with a serene expression on his face as Yoma ladled soup into his bowl and disappeared into the kitchen. If C’baoth was in a good mood, Luke could coax scraps of information on what life was like in the Jedi Order on Coruscant; if he was in one of his darker moods, he would refuse to speak at all about his past. 

C’baoth had been lost in the Unknown Regions when the Jedi Order fell, and he couldn’t tell Luke much about how Palpatine had corrupted Anakin Skywalker and orchestrated the genocide of the Jedi. He preferred to speak about his achievements as a Jedi Knight, mediating conflicts across the galaxy. Those stories were interesting, but Luke wanted to learn more about the Order itself. Any scrap of information, even stories of daily life in the temple, helped him get a better sense of who the Jedi were and what the Order had been like in its heyday. Every detail was precious. 

C’baoth often chose to simply ignore his questions. He would continue to eat with the same distant, peaceful expression on his face, listening to Luke talk but not offering any commentary himself. If Luke went on long enough, he would eventually get a rise out of the Jedi Master, but he could never tell what would catch C’baoth’s attention. 

“There are stories that the Jedi fell because they forbid attachments,” Luke said, after several failed attempts to ask C’baoth’s opinion on the social structure of the Temple. “And romantic relationships.” 

“Forbidden?” C’baoth scoffed, putting down his spoon. “Discouraged, perhaps, but it was hardly true in practice. I would say that the fact that they were _lenient_ about such things was their downfall. The Jedi should have been above attachments to lesser mortals. They were short-sighted. They never saw their full potential as arbiters of the galaxy.” 

Luke shifted in his seat. He didn’t want to pick a fight, but it made him uncomfortable whenever C’baoth made disparaging comments about those who didn’t have any Force sensitivity. 

“Commoners are always so obsessed with romantic entanglements, and whether the Jedi did or did not indulge.” C’baoth made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “The past is unimportant. The future: _that_ is what we must concentrate on. The Force has told me what the future will bring, and it is up to us, the only Jedi left, to make it so.” 

Luke frowned. He admired C’baoth’s confidence, but he wasn’t so sure he believed in C’baoth’s visions. “Master Yoda once told me the future is always in motion—” 

C’baoth snorted. “What did I tell you? Short-sighted. Yoda and all of those who followed him were. It was one of the reasons I left Coruscant to join the Outbound Flight mission.” His gaze grew distant, troubled. If C’baoth showed an aversion to discussing the Jedi Order, his reaction to being reminded of the tragedy that had befallen Outbound Flight was even more extreme. 

Luke was growing increasingly concerned about C’baoth’s instability. Luke certainly didn’t have a vast range of experiences to draw on, but C’baoth wasn’t what he’d expected in a Jedi master. The serene bearing that Luke had expected disappeared with a mercurial quickness, replaced by flashes of temper that came and went like sudden storms. Something had happened to the Jedi master during the doomed Outbound Flight, Luke was sure of it, though C’baoth refused to speak on the topic. Luke knew that people processed trauma in many different ways, but he couldn’t help but wonder if C’baoth’s volatile nature had another source. 

Luke himself was proof that a skilled master of Force manipulation could graft a fragment of his will onto another being and he wondered if something similar had happened to C’baoth. If, at the moment the Outbound Flight met its doom, the four other Jedi on board had fused their souls to C’baoth’s spirit in a final act of desperation. It could explain C’baoth’s abrupt shifts in mood; his mercurial temperament that seemed to swing from a Jedi-like serenity to anger with little warning. C’baoth needed professional help, but Luke doubted that an ordinary counselor would be able to help someone carrying the weight of four lost, traumatized souls. Perhaps the Jedi Temple had had such resources in its heyday, but they couldn’t help C’baoth now. 

Regardless, the Outbound Flight was off-limits. Luke was about to change the subject when C’baoth’s face cleared, like a stormcloud lifting away from a mountain. 

“Tell me more about Mara Jade,” C’baoth said. 

Mara’s startling green eyes flashed through Luke’s mind. Ever since leaving Myrkr, he could sense her presence on the edge of his consciousness, though the connection was muted by the distance between them. He knew that if he focused on that distant flicker that he’d lock onto her like a targeting computer and drop everything to hunt her down. The guilt over what he’d already done to her was hard enough to bear. 

“She’s Force-sensitive, and she’s had some training but…she isn’t a Jedi and doesn’t use the Force anymore.” 

C’baoth had shown no interest in the Empire nor professed an affiliation to any cause, and Luke didn’t think he’d hold Mara’s Imperial past against her, but he wasn’t sure how C’baoth would respond to her connection with Palpatine. 

“I have seen much potential in her. You must bring her to me.” C’baoth’s eyes lit with an almost feverish light. “As I told you before, I will need apprentices to carry on my life’s work. If we are to rebuild the Jedi as they once were, as the great arbiters of justice throughout the galaxy, we will need the most powerful Force-sensitives alive to join our cause. Call her through the Force, and she will come. I will teach her such power as you can’t imagine. I have seen this.” 

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Master,” he said. 

C’baoth’s eyes went cold and flat. “Are you questioning me, Apprentice?” 

“Of course not, Master. It’s just—wouldn’t it be better to wait until we’ve figured out how to remove the Emperor’s command?” 

_Please fix me,_ he thought. _Please._

“Perhaps,” C’baoth said, his manner relaxing a bit as he leaned back in his chair. “She will come to me, you know. I have seen it.” 

Luke nodded. C’baoth clearly didn’t want any more arguments on this front. They finished dinner in silence. 

After dinner, they meditated together, C’baoth guiding Luke through a pattern they’d established that helped calm his mind and keep the command at a muffled distance. Unlike regular meditation sessions, he was always exhausted after struggling to tamp down the command, and the fatigue clung to him throughout the rest of the day. He wondered again if he was coming down with something. 

C’baoth, on the other hand, seemed to be refreshed after every session, invigorated by the challenge that the Emperor’s command presented. 

“It is a complicated process, removing a thread woven so deep in the subject’s mind. It is a process that takes time, and one that requires a delicate touch.” His expression was kind as Luke slumped out of his meditation pose. “You will grow used to it in time, Apprentice Skywalker, and your stamina will improve.” 

“Thank you, Master C’baoth.” 

Luke still couldn’t shake the feeling that C’baoth admired what Palpatine had done. He didn’t sense the dark side clinging to C’baoth the way it had hung around Vader and the Emperor like a thick miasma. If C'baoth _were_ a dark Jedi, why would he even bother pretending to be a fragile old man who lived alone on an obscure planet? 

“We will start again in the morning,” C’baoth said. “There is much to do.” 

Luke rose to his feet and followed the Jedi Master out of the meditation room and down the long, dark hall to their quarters. He was so tired he felt like he was in a daze as he prepared for bed.

 _Please,_ he thought as his head hit the pillow, _No dreams tonight._

* * *

Luke stared down at the blood test in his hands. He’d run the test through the machine three times and every time it had come up negative for viruses, infection, or other pathogens. The first aid kit he carried in his X-Wing was basic at best, and it _was_ possible that he’d picked up something that the test couldn’t detect. Maybe. 

He didn’t have any other symptoms that he could feed into the kit’s medical database; he was just tired, more tired than seemed normal for him. The climate of Jomark was relatively mild, but perhaps his body was still having trouble acclimating to the environment. The tests just kept coming up negative. 

Luke sighed, letting his head drop back and loll against the headrest of the seat in his X-wing. He’d kept the canopy propped up as he sat in the cockpit, the med kit spread out across his lap and the console in front of him, and he could hear Artoo’s concerned trill from where the droid was perched in his socket. 

[Is your operating system fully functional?] the screen on his X-Wing translated. 

“It looks like it is,” he told Artoo. “I’m just… tired, I guess.” C’baoth was probably right. The process of weeding out Palpatine’s command was taking a toll on him. 

Artoo let out a concerned burble. 

“Don’t worry, Artoo. I’ll be alright. Master C’baoth and I have been working on my… problem, and it takes a lot out of me.” 

He smiled as a string of encouragements tracked across the screen. 

C’baoth’s prejudices extended to droids; he didn’t only mistrust them, he called them “abominations—creations that reason, but are not genuinely part of the Force.” Luke had witnessed similar anti-droid sentiments before, particularly in older vets who had fought on the side of the Republic in the Clone Wars, but he’d never agreed with their attitude. It was disappointing—but then, Artoo hadn’t gotten along Yoda, either. 

C’baoth had forbidden Artoo from entering the grounds of the High Castle, and Luke had to sneak out to see Artoo after C’baoth had retired for the night, though he was finding it harder and harder to stay awake after their post-dinner meditation sessions. On evenings when he did make it out to the X-wing, Artoo would review the results of the scans he made of the surrounding area, though there was nothing much to report, and Luke suspected that the small droid was bored. 

The first thing Artoo had done when he’d climbed up into the cockpit that evening was to list the transmissions that had failed in the last two days. The list had taken a full three minutes to scroll down the screen. Artoo couldn’t connect to the holonet out here, and the mountains that cradled the lake interfered with the X-wing’s scanners and transmitters. Artoo’s report on the failed transmissions was followed by a list of suggestions of things that Artoo thought they should be doing instead of waiting around on Jomark. The list was extensive. 

Luke hadn’t spoken with Han and Leia, or anyone else for that matter, since he’d left Coruscant. The New Republic had been in crisis mode when he’d left and he had no idea if Thrawn had attacked again, or how the New Republic was managing to hold together. 

It was fine, he told himself, he’d been cut off from the action before. Leia and Han were more than capable of handling anything the galaxy could throw at them. 

According to Artoo’s scans, the High Castle didn’t have any long-range transmission comms, and C’baoth had confirmed that the comms in Chynoo were limited to on-planet transmissions. The only contact the people of Jomark had with the wider galaxy were visits from an occasional passing trader. Luke suspected that was the reason that C’baoth had chosen it in the first place. 

The High Castle was an ideal location for a Jedi to reflect and meditate in peace. The villagers kept their distance, and outside of C’baoth and Artoo, he hadn’t had an actual conversation with another sentient being since landing on Jomark. 

He wondered how Han and Leia were doing. Leia would be further along in her pregnancy the next time he saw her. He missed her. He had so much to tell her. 

_It wasn’t as if he had a choice._

“I’d better get back to my room,” he said. “I’ll see you later, Artoo.’” 

As he climbed out of the X-wing a few drops of rain spattered across his face. The sky was heavy and dark, and sheets of rain hung like grey veils over the mountains on the far side of the lake. He paused for a moment in front of the gate to the High Castle, watching the rain drift across the bowl of the lake. 

The command had begun to haunt him again. 

The compulsion wasn’t as strong as it had been before, and a meditation session with C’baoth was always enough to give him momentary peace again, even if the Jedi Master still hadn’t figured out how to remove the command permanently. C’baoth has assured him that there _was_ a way to root out the compulsion, and once he’d found the way past the roar of the command, they could remove it, but all they had succeeded in doing so far was to dampen the sound of command inside his head. The process was exhausting, but at least they seemed to be on the right path. 

He hoped so. He couldn’t keep living like this. 

He’d had a lot of time to dwell on what happened at Myrkr. The attack played in his head over and over, a string of violent images he couldn’t escape: the crack that had rung out through the hold as he bashed Mara’s head against the side of a shuttle—the way the smell of oil, slick on the floor of the hold, had obscured the smell of blood and fear—her face, white with pain as she stood over him, the blaster shaking in her hand. He remembered every second. 

His memories of Mara _before_ he’d attacked her were soured by guilt, although the trek hadn’t been all that bad in comparison—no, alright, it _had_ been a miserable, exhausting slog, they’d both been injured in vornskr attacks, and it hadn’t been pleasant traveling with a woman who started out hating him so fervently that she wanted to kill him herself. After the second vornskr attack, and the following revelation of her identity and connection with Palpatine, he’d had slightly more sympathy for her position, though he kept his guard up. She continued to glare and spit orders in his direction—though he thought that maybe he’d gotten through to her, and perhaps she was beginning to see him as a person and not just the target of her hatred. Just a little. 

The next night, the temperature had dropped, and Mara had allowed him to build a small fire after the sun had set. They ate their ration packs in silence, huddled close to the firepit. He could sense that Mara was mulling something over, and he had questions of his own that he wanted to ask her. 

“How long have you—” he began. 

She cut him off before he’d even finished the question. “You were on the Death Star. You’re the only one who knows. How did the Emperor die?” 

It was a question that must have haunted her for years, and he knew that asking hadn’t been easy, no matter how desperately she wanted to hear the answer. 

He now thought of the Battle of Endor as a day of bittersweet victory, but for her, it had been the moment when she’d lost everything. Even though he found what she’d told him of her past repugnant, it had been a life of prestige and luxury, and that she grieved for the glittering future that had been abruptly snatched away from her. She hadn’t said much about her life afterward, and what had led her to a position on Karrde’s crew, but it was clear that she’d struggled for years before working her way up in his organization. 

“The Emperor was trying to turn me to the dark side,” he began. He’d told this story a thousand times, but the memory was still painful. “He almost succeeded. I’d taken one swing at him, and wound up fighting with Vader instead. I guess he thought that if I killed Vader in anger, I’d fall to the dark side.” 

“And so instead you ganged up on him,” she cut in, her voice sharp with anger. “You turned on him—both of you—” 

“Wait a minute,” Luke protested. “I didn’t attack him. Not after that first swing.” 

“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “I saw you do it. Both of you moved in against him with your lightsabers. I _saw_ you do it.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I could always hear him—the Emperor. No matter where I was, I could hear his voice anywhere in the galaxy. The moment he died, I had a—a vision. I saw you and Vader turn on the Emperor and cut him down. I _saw_ it.” 

Now, when he looked back on that night, her words took on new shading as he contemplated what the Emperor had achieved on the point of death. Like a targeter spider shooting sticky lines of silk, Palpatine had bound him with a fatal command, while gifting Mara with a distorted vision of the fight on the Death Star, framing Luke for his death. 

_Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design._ What twisted plan had Palpatine envisioned playing out years after his death? 

“I didn’t move against him,” he had told her. “He was about to kill me when Vader picked him up and threw him down an open shaft. I couldn’t have done anything even if I’d wanted to—I was still half-paralyzed from the lightning bolts he’d hit me with.” 

“What do you mean, if you’d wanted to?” Mara said scornfully. “That was the whole reason you went aboard the Death Star in the first place, wasn’t it?” 

“No, I didn’t go to the Death Star to kill the Emperor. I went there to save my father.” 

“Your father?” Her face was still twisted in disbelief, but she listened intently. 

“Darth Vader was my father. I went to the Death Star to try and turn him away from the dark side.” 

She stared at him blankly for a moment. “You’re lying.” 

“Why should I lie?” he countered. 

“I would have _known_ if that were true—I would have known...” her voice trailed off. “The Emperor—did the Emperor know?” 

Luke nodded. “He knew. He tried to use that knowledge to turn me. To turn both of us against each other.” 

Luke could still hear the Emperor taunting him, as though his voice was whispering in his ear, _young Skywalker_ hissing through shriveled lips. He’d stripped away Luke’s confidence; chipped away at his faith bit by bit until Luke could feel the dark side surging up against his defenses. 

Mara was shaking her head, her expression distant and uncertain. “If Vader _was_ —that would mean—” 

For the first time, he’d felt a flash of pity for her. “It doesn’t change the fact that if I hadn’t been there Vader wouldn’t have turned on him. In that sense, I’m probably still responsible for his death.” 

“That’s right, you are,” Mara agreed harshly. 

After a few beats, she added, the scorn in her voice still thick: “You failed anyway. You didn’t save him.” 

“I did save him. My father turned away from the dark side right before he died.” 

Her expression changed again, a tiny line of confusion appearing between her brows. 

“That’s possible?” she asked quietly. 

“Yes. No matter how far you’ve fallen, you can reject the dark and return to the light. It’s not an easy path, but it is possible.” He wasn’t sure that Yoda would agree with him there, but after Endor, he believed it was _possible_ , if not a path that many who were consumed by darkness took. 

She was quiet for a few minutes as she considered his answer. 

“How can you tell the difference between the light side and the dark side?” she asked. 

The question threw him for a moment as he tried to work out how to explain in simple terms what had become as easy as breathing for him. 

She took his momentary silence for confusion. “What does the dark side _feel_ like?” she clarified. 

“The dark side feels… cold,” he began, “It feeds on negative emotions and intentions. You can feel it when you’re in the grip of anger or fear. It feels like an easy path through whatever’s tormenting you, but what it offers in exchange is power, and not knowledge or compassion. It leads you to a place of loneliness and pain.” 

“That’s what Vader felt like,” she said, nodding her head absently. “It didn’t feel like that when I used my—abilities. They were just… a tool.” She looked down at the blaster in her hands, a finger rubbing along the edge. “My abilities died when he did, anyway. It doesn’t matter.” 

“I don’t think it works like that,” he said. “I don’t think you can lose your ability to use the Force, if you’re already Force-sensitive.” 

She looked doubtful, brow furrowed. “It all dried up after Endor. I can’t even lift a sheet of flimsiplast.” 

“I couldn’t either, before Obi-Wan told me about my connection to the Force.” He spread his hands. “It was dormant for most of my life. I think your connection is like that too, and you could regain what you’ve lost. If I’m right, I could help you figure out how to reconnect to the Force, provided…” 

“Provided?” 

“Well, provided you don’t kill me first.” There was no way to test it on Myrkr, anyway. 

She scowled. “Yeah, we’ll see about that.” 

That had been the end of the conversation for the night, but he sensed that he had broken through to her. The next day, as they fought their way through a particularly aggressive swath of Myrkr vegetation, he told her about his training and what he knew about Jedi philosophy. 

He asked her about her own training, too. She’d ignored his questions at first, but he didn’t let it go; gnawed at it like an anooba at a bone, and eventually, she began to talk, telling him a little about her life in the palace before the Emperor’s death. Slowly, question by question, he began to get a picture of who Mara Jade had been and who she was now. 

Every scrap of hard-won camaraderie was shattered when he’d pulled a lightsaber on her and attempted to murder her in the hold of the _Wild Karrde_. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

“Kriff, yes, _I know,”_ he muttered to himself. 

He counted his breaths, moving into the pattern that C’baoth had taught him. It was similar to the Jedi calming techniques that Yoda had taught him, but C’baoth’s lessons had allowed him to sink deeper into his own mind. There he could find shelter, a limited respite from the voice that battered up against his metal shields. 

It wasn’t a cure. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

Mara’s presence had been flickering in and out for the last few days like a faulty light. He could only assume she had come in contact with Karrde’s ysalamiri, since the periods in which she disappeared were brief. Whenever he sensed her the command would flare up again like a signal fire. 

He lifted the latch on the gate and slipped into the courtyard of the High Castle. The edge of the rainstorm had finally reached this side of the lake, a dark curtain of rain rushing over the water toward Chynoo. Weariness was washing over him again, and his steps were heavy as he entered the Castle and plodded up the stairs to his room. 

Soon. They had to find a way to release him from the Emperor’s hold soon. He couldn’t keep living like this. 


	3. Chapter 3

The lightsaber soared toward Luke in a perfect curve from the hull of the sail barge to the skiff where he stood. Luke stretched out his hand, anticipating the weight of the weapon landing perfectly in his cupped palm. It never reached him. 

The sun glinted against the silver cylinder as it froze in mid-air, flashing like a signal light as it rotated and reversed direction. Luke felt his mouth fall open as it sailed back toward the barge into Mara’s waiting hand. 

She stood on the upper deck in a flimsy dancer's outfit. Two shimmery blue scraps of fabric crossed her chest and wrapped around the back of her neck, and longer strips of fabric hung from an ornate gold belt at her hips and were secured to a pair of golden anklets. Her legs were covered in mesh tights from her ankles to her upper thighs, with matching mesh gloves from her upper arms to her wrists. Her feet were bare, and her red hair whipped free in the wind. The expression on her face was merciless. 

In the next instant, Luke was on the deck facing her without any clear memory of how he made his way across from the skiff. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

He was unarmed, but knew that he could still kill her with the aid of the Force and his bare hands alone. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

He didn’t want to kill her—but he was helpless to resist the command thundering in his head. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. “You shouldn’t be here!’ he shouted. “That’s not how this happens!” 

She raised the lightsaber, the green glow casting an eerie light across her features. Luke felt his right hand lift in response, watching with horror as his fingers pulled into a fist. Mara dropped the lightsaber, her hands scrabbling at her throat, eyes wide as she struggled for air. He pressed against her windpipe until she dropped to the deck.

The lightsaber rolled across the deck toward him and he stopped it with the toe of his boot. He was just bending to pick up the saber when he was pulled out of sleep with a jolt, his gasp loud in the quiet of his room on Jomark. 

The voice in his head was silent. 

He could hear a species of night bat chattering near his window, but it wasn’t the sound of the bats that had wrenched him from his nightmare. Ripples in the Force were emanating from the front of the mansion. Throwing a robe on over his sleep pants, he went to the window, pushing aside the thin reed shutters. The landscape was illuminated by the light of the three small moons that orbited Jomark, each no bigger than his thumbnail in the night sky. The island at the center of the lake was a shadow against the flat surface of the water, washed silver in the moonlight. 

The slope in front of the gate to the High Castle was lit by a harsh spotlight emanating from a Skipray that had settled alongside his X-wing. He could sense that C’baoth had left the castle to greet whomever had landed, but the wall around the building obscured his view of the Jedi master. He stretched out to get a sense of the visitor and was met with a blank space, an absence of the Force that pooled out from the base of the Skipray. 

Like on Myrkr. Turning from the window, Luke rushed down the stairs, heading toward the front of the courtyard. There were voices coming through the gate, which had been left ajar. 

Mara’s voice. “—The Emperor did a lot of that, too. It didn’t help him much in the end.”

“Perhaps I am wiser than the Emperor was,” C’baoth said. As Luke stepped out of the shadow of the gate, the Jedi master turned slightly in his direction, without taking his eyes off Mara, and said, “I told you to go to your chambers.” 

The reason Luke hadn’t sensed her presence was obvious: a ysalamir frame strapped across her back. Her blaster was pointed at C’baoth, and she continued to point it at the Jedi master even after Luke stepped into her line of sight. 

C’baoth had somehow sensed her coming, Luke realized, in spite of the ysalamir. He’d taken a strange turn earlier that evening, and Luke had thought for a few minutes that he’d taken ill. C’baoth had brushed off Luke’s concern, and Luke had backed off, afraid that C’baoth would descend into one of his volatile tempers. He’d been so tired, too, that when C’baoth had told him to return to his room to sleep he had obeyed without thinking. 

Luke hadn’t taken his proclamations that Mara would come to Jomark of her own will very seriously anyway—and yet she was here, standing at the foot of the Skipray, though the blaster suggested that she hadn’t come for the reasons that C’baoth had predicted. Her face looked pale and washed out in the Skipray’s spotlight, and she had her eyes locked on C’baoth with a wary intensity he recognized from the first few days on Myrkr. 

“Skywalker,” she said, turning her head slightly to look at him, her blaster still aimed at C’baoth. “Look—Skywalker—” 

“Aren’t you aiming that at the wrong person?” he said tensely. 

Why was she here? Even with the ysalamir hiding her presence from him, she didn’t know he wouldn’t still try to attack her. If she had come for revenge, he wasn’t sure he would even bother to stop her. 

“I didn’t come here to kill you,” she said. Her gaze flicked back to C’baoth though she continued to address him. “I came here to ask for your help.” 

“My help?” 

“Karrde’s in trouble with the Empire. He’s being held aboard Thrawn’s flagship. I need your help to get him out.”

He stared at her. Of all the people in the galaxy—“why me?” 

“Who else but a Jedi to break into an Imperial Star Destroyer and get out alive?” She turned her glare on him again. “Didn’t you and Solo used to do this sort of thing all the time?”

“Sort of.” They’d had some wild adventures in the past, but breaking into Imperial battleships wasn’t _exactly_ his area of expertise. Not anymore. “I don’t think I’m the right person to help you.” 

“I don’t—” Her face pinched in frustration. “I don’t have anyone else to ask. Karrde will die if you don’t come with me. You _owe_ me.” 

“You may think that, my new apprentice,” C’baoth said softly. “But the Force called you to come and study at my side.” 

Mara snorted. “It didn’t, actually. I’m not here for you, old man.” 

“You are mistaken, Mara Jade.” 

She shook her head. “I can’t do what Skywalker does. I don’t have his powers.” 

“You do,” C'baoth said. “I have felt it. Flashes of a powerful presence in the Force. Your abilities are coming back, and you need a teacher to guide you.” 

Something in Mara’s face twisted. “Skywalker,” she barked, looking back at him. “I came for _you._ You owe Karrde for not executing you on Myrkr or turning you over to Thrawn. You owe _me.”_

“I can’t leave,” Luke said. “We still haven’t managed to remove the command. I’m a danger to you.” 

“I brought a ysalamir,” she said, jerking her head toward the frame. “You can stay in the bubble for the entire trip, if you want. I just need your Jedi tricks on the _Chimaera_.” 

He frowned. He did owe her, and he wanted to help Karrde, but he wasn’t convinced that a single ysalamir would be enough. Perhaps the ysalamir combined with the work that he and C’baoth had already done to shore up his defenses—but it was a risk, and if the command took hold of his mind as it had done on Myrkr, then Mara would die. Could he gamble her life against his own self-control? 

Something desperate and pleading flashed across her face. She was genuinely frightened for Karrde, enough to risk her own life to seek Luke out. “What can I do to convince you to come with me?” 

Luke took a deep breath, released it. 

On the other hand, he was already half-convinced that C’baoth couldn’t, or, for reasons he didn’t understand, _wouldn’t_ help him, and if they didn’t find a cure in the next few days then he was wasting his time and he might as well leave with Mara. 

“Stay a few days. Master C’baoth’s taught me a few techniques to control the command and we’re close to finding a cure. We can test the techniques and if they work, I’ll come with you.” 

“If I stay then you’ll help me rescue Karrde?” 

“Yes. If it’s safe for you, yes.” 

“Two days,” she countered. “Karrde can’t afford to wait any longer than that.” 

“Two days,” he promised. Maybe a deadline would help focus their efforts. “If it’s alright with you, Master C’baoth.” Luke made a bow in the Jedi master’s direction. “You can teach Mara a few things before she leaves, when we’re not working on the command.”

C’baoth had been watching the exchange closely, a distant and inscrutable expression on his face. It felt important to appeal to him; to include him in the compromise. 

Luke wasn’t entirely sure how open Mara would be to spending part of her days training. She’d expressed interest in recovering her abilities on Myrkr, before he’d attacked her, but he didn’t know where she stood now. 

She didn’t say anything, and she didn’t let the blaster waver. 

“Very well,” C’baoth said, folding his hands in front of him. “Apprentice Jade will prepare for her lessons tomorrow. I will speak to both of you in the morning.” The Jedi master swept past him, apparently unconcerned that Luke would be left alone with Mara. 

As soon as C’baoth disappeared into the High Castle Mara let the blaster drop to her side. 

“He’s insane,” she said flatly. 

“He’s… not completely stable,” Luke said. 

Mara let out a skeptical noise. “And you trust him with your head?” 

“I don’t have any choice. There isn’t anyone else I can reach out to, not anymore. What the Emperor did to my head—it’s complicated.” He noticed a slight flinch in her expression at the mention of her former master, but it vanished quickly. “We’ve been working on it, but it takes time.” 

“Two days,” she said. “That’s all.” 

There were plenty of empty bedrooms at the High Castle, but he was reluctant to have her so close, even with the ysalamir masking her presence. Before he could say anything, she said, “I’m sleeping on my ship. I don’t think you can get past a locked seal.” 

He shook his head. 

“I’ll see you in the morning, Skywalker.” 

* * *

A soft tap on his door woke him the next day. He didn’t sense C’baoth or Yoma in the hallway; there was nothing, only an eerie blank space where he should have sensed the presence of another human being. It could only be Mara, within the ysalamir bubble. When he opened the door, the ysalamir frame rested on the doorframe beside her. 

She was dressed in dark brown pants and a loose cream-colored shirt and still wore a brace on the wrist that he’d broken. Following his gaze, she glanced down her arm and shrugged her shoulder. “It’s fine,” she said. “It should be off in a few days.” 

His eyes automatically skated up to her hairline, searching for any hint of the head wound he’d inflicted. He could still hear the sickening crack as her head hit the bulkhead, but any evidence had been wiped away by bacta treatments. 

Her hand jerked as though she were about to raise it to her head, but she dropped it to her side and scowled. “It’s _fine._ Karrde has people. They patched me up.” 

“It’s not,” he said softly. 

She looked as though she intended to argue, but she said: “It _won’t_ be if you try it again.” 

He nodded. “As long as you stay in the ysalamir’s bubble I won’t touch you, but I’m not sure I can control myself if you leave it. We’ve been working on removing the compulsion, but...it’s a complicated process.” 

“That’s why I’m here,” she said, gesturing to the ysalamir frame. “We need to test the limits of the ysalamir, and whatever C’baoth’s done with your head. See if it works well enough for you to leave.” 

He still didn’t think leaving was a good idea, but he’d made a promise.

The hallways in the High Castle twisted and turned, taking illogical routes through the building, full of abrupt corners and unexpected dead ends. Dead in the center was a solarium whose function had long been lost to time. The long room was completely empty, and weak morning light slanted in through a series of skylights that had frosted to a dull yellow color with age. In spite of the sunlight, the solarium was always cooler than Luke expected, as though the skylights had sucked all the warmth out of the beams that filtered through and fell on the bare wood-panelled floors. 

Mara paused just inside the doorway. “My...abilities have started to come back,” she said quietly. “It’s like I can feel—like I _know_ that something’s going to go wrong before it does. And I was able to move something with my mind. Just once.” 

“You lied to C’baoth,” he said slowly. It hadn’t been a direct lie, he supposed, but she’d implied that she didn’t believe that she was Force-sensitive. 

“I don’t trust him and neither should you.” She turned and faced him fully. “I do want to learn how to...use it. But I don’t trust C’baoth. I’d rather learn from you.” 

“I can’t teach you. I’m not safe yet.” 

“Then we have to figure out how to fix this.” She put the ysalamir frame down and pulled her blaster out of its holster at her side, setting it to stun. Picking up the frame again, she walked backwards down the solarium, her gaze fixed on him. Her hair took on a golden sheen in the light, motes of dust dancing around her. 

When she approached the center of the room, the limits of the ysalamir bubble eased away and the Force flooded into him again. He could feel the flow of things around him, his senses expanding through the hall around them—but not to Mara. 

The voice in his head was quiet. 

She came to a stop, watching him as he sucked in a breath and let it go. Luke couldn’t read her expression and while in the Force-null bubble her emotional state was closed to him. 

“I can’t sense you in the bubble,” he said. “I think I need to be able to sense you to—” 

She nodded. “Right.” Placing the frame to the side, Mara lifted her blaster to aim directly at him as she walked backward out of range of the ysalamir’s influence. 

He closed his eyes. She was absent, invisible—and then she wasn’t. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. He bit down on the inside of his mouth, tasting copper. 

He ran through the techniques that C’baoth had taught him, trying to find a way past the roar of Palpatine’s voice in his head. It was as if he were trying to push sand into a wall against the crash of a wave. 

His hands were shaking. 

Do or do not, there is no try. Yoda’s mantra was even more painfully relevant now; if he didn’t manage to control the command, Mara would die. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. He tried to think past the voice, concentrating on weaving the pattern in his mind that C’baoth had taught him to pull up a shield against the command. 

He felt the pattern soildlify, and for a second he had it—he could feel the compulsion retreating to some dark recess again. 

Then—YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. He flung himself across the room, giving the ysalamir a wide berth as he barreled toward Mara. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. It only took a moment for him to clear the room. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. He saw her face clearly for a second as he closed in, her eyes wide and mouth set in a tight line. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. The barrel of her blaster tracked toward him, her hand steady. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. His arm swung out toward her head. YOU WILL KILL—

* * *

His chest hurt. 

Wincing, Luke opened his eyes, quickly closing them again as a wave of nausea washed over him. It took him a moment to gather that he was stretched out on the floor, the wood paneling hard against his back even though it felt like the rest of the room was spinning around him. The back of his head was throbbing. He couldn’t feel the Force. 

“Hey. How are you feeling?” 

He groaned. A stun blast point-blank to the chest _hurt._

He opened his eyes again, squinting against the light as Mara slowly came into focus. She was leaning over him, close enough to touch, though the compulsion to reach out and throttle the life out of her had vanished again. It was clear why: she’d dragged the ysalamir to his side, the frame standing within her reach. Her blaster was still drawn, but it hung at her side, pointed at the ground. Not at him. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Uh- _huh,”_ Mara said, lifting an eyebrow as he levered himself into a sitting position. “Sure you are.” 

He closed his eyes briefly as the room spun around him. His chest ached as though he’d been in a speeder crash; his skin was sweat-damp and clammy. At the back of his skull there was a lump from when he hit the ground after being stunned, tender under his fingers as he prodded it. 

“A healing trance will cure your symptoms.” C’baoth’s voice floated out of the shadows and Luke turned his head to see the Jedi Master standing by a side door at the front of the room. He wondered how long C’baoth had been standing there. A shadow crossed C’baoth’s face and Luke thought for a moment that the Jedi Master’s anger had returned. 

“You shouldn’t have attempted this on your own, Apprentice Skywalker.” As he stepped into the room, the anger had vanished, replaced with a gently chastising look. 

“I’m sorry, Master C’baoth.” He was right, Luke thought, suppressing the urge to duck his head like a chastised teenager. It had been a mistake to attempt a test of the command without his Master’s guidance. “I almost had it—just for a second.” 

“Promising,” C’baoth said. “Show me what you have achieved so far.” 

They started again. 

Mara stood on the far end of the hall, the ysalamir frame at her feet, Luke at the front of the hall with C’baoth seated behind him. The Jedi master was a calming, steady presence at his back as he watched Mara step from the center of the room. It felt as though every muscle and nerve in his body was strung tight as he anticipated the return of the compulsion’s grip on his mind. 

Mara took a step back, and then another, until she reached the edge of the ysalamir bubble and her presence blazed across the Force like a firework.

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

“Luke.” C’baoth’s voice echoed through the room; through his head. “Focus on me. Begin the pattern.” 

It started with a series of breaths; in and out, in and out, pause, _find your center,_ in and out. As he began to turn inward, Luke could sense the command vibrating through his mind, louder and more insistent. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

Slipping into the Force had once been a thing of wonder and joy, and now it was tainted by the voice of the Emperor hissing and shrieking that single command. Any time he tried to reach into the Force flowing around him there was a snare left waiting to trap him inside of his own head. He’d surrendered so easily the first time. He’d let the command flow through him, taking charge of his limbs and making him a passenger in his own body. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

It had been in his head for five years, embedded deep in his psyche, lying dormant, like some sort of fungus growing in his brain, filaments and mycelium fusing to his nervous system, taking over his mind like a vitzi parasite. He hadn’t even known it was there. _He hadn’t known._ What sort of Jedi was he? 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The command was everything. His own will no longer meant anything to him. There was only—

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. It pressed in on him. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t breathe. 

_Find your center,_ he told himself desperately. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. _My name is Luke Skywalker. The Force is with me. You will not control me._

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE— 

The command hammered at him, shredding his concentration, the compulsion wearing away at him. Just when he felt himself begin to succumb, C’baoth was there, breaking through the tumult like a hand reaching out to steady him. He could feel C’baoth folding—he didn’t know how else to describe it—silence around him like a heavy blanket. With C’baoth beside him, shielding him from the command, he could begin the pattern on his own, pulling peace from deep within himself and building a shield between his mind and the command.

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

He felt the shield slip into place, steady and true. Behind his shielding, he could feel the Force again, like a pool of untainted water, cool and quiet, so _quiet._ As long as he could follow this pattern and reestablish the barrier, he could keep the command at bay. 

C’baoth was there, too, beside him, behind the shield that stood between him and the command. He could feel the Jedi Master’s approval. _Good work, Apprentice Skywalker._

He slowly shifted his awareness back into his body. He was breathing hard, his hands clenched at his sides. His skin felt clammy, his shirt clung to the sweat on his back. 

“It’s...quiet,” he gasped. “It’s still there in my head, but it’s quiet.” 

His head pounded, and it felt like a hot blade was being forced through his skull, but the command had been reduced to a sinister hum at the back of his mind. It wasn’t gone, it was just...subdued. He could still sense it, in a way he hadn’t when the command had lain dormant in the years before he’d met Mara, but the shield that he and C’baoth had erected was holding. 

He stepped forward. The command was still quiet, and he felt his heart lift. 

He took a few more steps in Mara’s direction. Her hand shot up, the barrel of her blaster honed on him. 

He stopped. “I’m going to see if it holds,” he said, and started forward again, slowly crossing the room toward her. She didn’t drop her weapon. He half expected the command to return to full force as his proximity to Mara increased, but it remained quiet as he approached. 

He let out a breath as he stopped a few feet away from her. The command had stayed quiet, subdued, down to the level of a whisper calling from a distance. 

He shut his eyes and spent a moment just breathing. 

When he opened his eyes again Mara was watching him with an appraising look, her blaster at her side. 

“I can control it,” he said. A giddy feeling bubbled up within him but was doused by the unsmiling expression on her face. 

“For how long?” she asked. “Long enough to fly to the Wistril system, rescue Karrde, and make it back?” 

“I don’t know.” He didn’t have an answer. It was a temporary stop-gap, he knew. He was beginning to understand the technique, but he wasn’t sure he was capable of recreating it if the command came back in full-force. It was still there, hovering just at the borders of his shields. 

“A promising start,” C’baoth said. “We shall see how well it holds tonight. Tomorrow morning we will repeat the process again. Your defenses will last a little longer each time, and every day we will get closer to rooting it out.” 

That was too long. Mara didn’t say anything, but her eyes cut across to C’baoth, and her expression was pinched and unhappy. 

“If it holds today and tomorrow, we could try,” he said. “You have the ysalamir in case I have another episode.” 

“I wouldn’t advise that,” C’baoth said. “If your shields should fail without my guidance...” The threat hung in the air. He crossed to where Luke sat and placed a thin hand on his shoulder, his expression gentling. “You should rest. Go into a healing trance for the rest of the day.” 

The moment C’baoth’s hand touched his shoulder, he felt as though the last of his adrenaline had melted away and exhaustion fell over him like a lead blanket. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this drained. His head throbbed. 

“Yes, Master,” he said, his words slurring a little. 

“Apprentice Mara will join me while you’re recovering.” C’baoth smiled. “She has much to learn and there is so little time.” 

Mara didn’t smile back. “What if whatever you did to Skywalker’s head doesn’t hold?” 

“Don’t worry, you won’t be able to sense her while you’re in the trance,” C’baoth said to Luke. “If the Emperor’s compulsion returns I’ll shield her from you while she begins the first steps of her training.” 

“Thank you, Master.” He glanced back at Mara again, an uneasy feeling trickling down his back. “I’ll… see you soon.” He wanted to say more, but he was conscious of C’baoth beside him. Mara gave him a jerk of her head, her face still inscrutable. 

Luke paused and looked back when he reached the door. They were both watching him, C’baoth with the canny, calculating expression that Luke had seen often on his face, as though Luke were a puzzle he was eager to solve. It could be alternatively unsettling and reassuring; he _needed_ someone who could look at the command with a clear head and help him find a way to unravel Palpatine’s bond, even if it did leave him feeling like he was a curiosity that C’baoth was more invested in deciphering than a potential peer. 

In Mara’s face, Luke could read nothing at all. 


	4. Chapter 4

The migraine eased after a short meditation session, and his shielding held through the rest of the night. Luke wandered out of his room when dinnertime approached and found Mara meditating alone in the solarium. The afternoon light turned the empty room amber as it filtered through the faded skylights and illuminated motes of dust dancing through the air.

Her eyes snapped open when he stepped in the room, a flash of bright green, her gaze skittering over to the ysalamir frame on the other side of the room. He put his hands up. “I’m not going to attack you,” he said. “I’m still in control—” 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE ripped through his head. 

Mara saw him flinch, and her hand darted to her blaster. 

“No, no, it’s okay. I’m still under control. It’s a little louder, but I’m still under control.” 

Mara stood, blaster in hand. “Louder because whatever C’baoth did to your head is slipping?” 

“Maybe.” He hoped not. “It didn’t start up when I got out of the trance, so I think it’s a proximity thing as well.” 

“Not good enough to leave.” 

“We have another day. I’m almost there. It’s still holding,” he said, tapping his head. 

Mara pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow. “I’m still sleeping with a blaster and the ysalamir by my bed,” she said.

“Are you staying at the High Castle tonight?” It was growing dark in the hall, one half of the room already in shadow. 

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “C’baoth insisted.” 

“There’s a banquet hall downstairs where C’baoth and I have dinner, if you’d like to join us.” 

“Okay,” she said, after considering it for a moment. 

Mara followed him down to the banquet hall. It was dark in the hall, and Luke moved around the room, switching on the portable lamps that lit only a portion of the space. The lamps, like all of the lighting in the High Castle, were battery-powered. They stood on tripods grouped around the end of the long table where they ate dinner each night. 

“The power grid’s unreliable,” he explained to Mara. “We even use candles in the meditation room.” He had meant to check the Castle’s power grid and figure out what the issue was, but he’d just been so tired lately. 

The light from the lamps washed up the walls of the hall, illuminating dull splashes of paint. He watched Mara take a step forward, her head tilting back as she looked up at the mural that stretched to the ceiling above him. Humans and mythological creatures floated in the sky above a stylized representation of a village. The mythological creatures were finned and gilled in spite of being airborne, and the humans were dressed in archaic local fashions that had long disappeared from the island. 

“Whoever built and lived in this castle apparently abandoned it several hundred years ago. I’m not sure why. There’s a village down below, but the villagers aren’t interested in living here, even though they’ve kept it from falling to ruins.” 

“It’s a defendable position. Maybe they keep it maintained in case of an attack.” 

“That’s a good point.” He realized he hadn’t had an extended conversation with another human being other than C’baoth in over a week, and his conversations with the temperamental Jedi master continued to be fraught. Yoma’s grasp of basic was limited, and C’baoth discouraged familiarity with the villagers. Luke had been so consumed with extracting the command, he hadn’t realized how lonely the castle was. 

Mara began to walk along the wall, examining the murals in silence. He crossed to the final lantern, which stood near the head of the table, next to the seat that C’baoth had chosen as his own. When he turned back, Mara had melted into the shadows. 

“Mara?” he called, apprehension inexplicably curdling in his stomach. He could reach out and find her with the Force, but he shied away from chance it might cause the command to flare up again. 

“I’m here,” she said softly. 

He picked up one of the smaller portable lanterns and headed toward the sound of her voice and found her standing at the edge of the pool of light on the other side of the table. Hovering on the wall above her was an enormous painted creature that looked like an unholy fusion of bird and serpent, with spiky purple fins jutting out between lushly feathered wings. The monster had no visible eyes, only a black, open maw ringed with teeth. 

“C’baoth says…” she began, and then hesitated, her eyes on the mural. “I didn’t lose my connection to the Force when the Emperor died...I can still access that power.” She looked over at Luke. She raised a hand, her palm flat. “I lifted a datapad today.” 

He wished he’d been there to see her triumph in person. Back on Myrkr, he’d offered to teach her, but he couldn’t fulfill that promise now that he was a threat to her. 

Another thing the command had stolen from him. 

She frowned and flipped her hand upright into a _stop_ gesture. _“Don’t_ say I told you so.” 

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” A bit of the smile he’d been holding back slipped out. “What else did he teach you?” 

She turned back to the mural. “He taught me how to reach out and sense another person’s presence in the Force… _his_ presence in the Force. How to make a connection. He says—He says I have the talent to become a Jedi one day.” 

“You will be,” Luke said. “This is just the beginning—” 

“Right.” She cut him off, her voice hard. “Of the new glorious Jedi Order. With him at the head, no doubt. _Master_ C’baoth,” Her mouth twisted at the Jedi master’s name, as though it were distasteful. 

It was Luke’s dream to restore the Jedi Order, too. For the last five years, the weight of restoring the Order had rested on his shoulders, and there was some relief at knowing that weight was being lifted, at least for a time, by C’baoth. But at the same time, there was a small, ugly thought that niggled at the back of his head, a part of him that chafed at being pushed aside. He’d meditate on the matter, later, when things had stabilized and his mind was his own again. 

“He’s not what I expected either,” Luke admitted. “He’s nothing like the other Jedi Masters who trained me.” 

She looked away, fidgeting with the brace on her wrist. “He talks like Palpatine did.” 

“Surely he’s not that extreme—” He broke off at the expression on her face, eyebrows arched in disbelief. 

“Maybe not, but he’s not entirely sane, either,” she said. “Have you considered that he doesn’t want to help you get rid of the command? That it might be more convenient for whatever plans he has to draw the whole thing out?” 

“Yes,” Luke sighed. 

Luke wouldn’t have been surprised if C’baoth had stalled the process of removing the command in order to have more time to pass on what he knew before he died. Luke didn’t want to think that the Jedi Master was lying to him. C’baoth might have a few delusions of grandeur and a volatile temper, but Luke didn’t believe that he really meant any harm. And he’d already done so much to help Luke with the command. 

“I meant it when I said I’d leave with you in another day or so,” he continued. “I was hoping that would give us the push we need to finish rooting out the command. If we can’t…there’s still the ysalamir.” 

Mara frowned. He understood her reservations. She’d come to recruit him for the edge his talents would give a rescue mission; she wanted a _Jedi._ He knew what was expected of him, and wondered what his value would be to the galaxy at large if he couldn’t break free of the command. Walking away from it all was unimaginable. 

“We’ll keep trying,” he promised. 

“Sure,” she said, her voice flat. “Except—” 

She broke off as the door that led to the kitchens opened behind her and Yoma came into the room, carrying a stack of dishes that she placed on the table. From where he stood, Luke could see Yoma’s face when she first spotted Mara. The housekeeper was surprised, her eyes darting between Luke and Mara, and her expression shifted to one of horrified dismay. 

“Yoma, this is Mara Jade,” Luke called. “She’s here to study with C’baoth as well.” Mara turned toward the housekeeper and Yoma ducked her head in a jerky bow, her face sullen. “Mara, this is Yoma. She cooks for us.” 

Yoma grumbled something in her own language and then headed back toward the kitchen. Mara glanced at Luke and he shrugged. 

“The meals and service are not up to par with what one would expect in the Jedi Temple,” C’baoth said from the doorway that led to the main staircase. He swept to the head of the table. “But we must make do in these trying times.” 

“I’ve had worse,” Mara said as she took a seat to C’baoth’s right. 

“It’s not that bad,” Luke said as he sat across from her. He didn’t think Yoma’s cooking was bad at all, it was just that C’baoth seemed to hold the old woman to unreasonably high standards. 

That night’s meal was a simple fish curry. It might have been because he'd skipped lunch, but Luke thought the curry tasted wonderful; creamy and savory, with a tart lemon aftertaste. 

“We made good strides today, and we will continue tomorrow,” C’baoth pronounced as they finished their curry. 

“Yes, Mara was telling me about the training you did today,” Luke said. 

“She has made a little progress,” C’baoth said, with a nod. He gestured toward Mara. “She has shown promise in grasping the physical aspects of the Force. Unfortunately Apprentice Jade does not have the same mental acuity that you have, Luke. Her ability to make psychic connections with other Jedi is particularly weak and her telepathic skills are sadly stunted.” 

Something flickered in Mara’s face. “I never had any problem hearing the Emperor’s voice,” she said. 

“Ah, but Palpatine was a man of extraordinary powers. He had the skill to enhance your small talents, and that is why they disappeared when he died. He lied to you about your abilities to keep you loyal to him. After all, it wasn’t the only lie he fed you. He lied to you about many things, didn’t he?” 

Mara stiffened, flinching at his words. 

“Didn’t he, Apprentice Jade?” 

“Yes, Master C’baoth,” Mara ground out. 

“He was a devious Force adept indeed,” C’baoth said, leaning his chin on folded hands and staring off into the distance. Luke expected him to continue, but the Jedi Master had abruptly fallen into one of his reflective moods. 

Mara didn’t seem inclined toward conversation either. When Luke tried to catch her eye, she looked away, picking mechanically at the dark greens on the plate in front of her, without seeming to take any pleasure in it. The lamp behind her cast her face in shadow when she looked down, distorting the slope of her nose and curve of her mouth. Beyond the beams of light, darkness swallowed up the room. The silence seemed to press in around them like a physical weight. 

They finished the meal in silence. 

After dinner, C’baoth admitted that the day had tired him, and that he would retire early. “I suggest you both do the same,” he said. “We have another long day ahead of us.” 

As Yoma cleared the plates, Luke and Mara switched off the lamps that ran along either side of the table. Mara had gone to the far end of the table first, nearly disappearing in the darkness again, when Yoma caught his arm, her gnarled hands digging into his sleeve. “Take her out,” she whispered in rough Basic. “Take her out.” 

“Mara’s just here to study with Master C’baoth,” Luke said, hoping his reassuring tone would convey his meaning. “It’s okay. Mara isn’t going to hurt you or anyone on Chynoo. She’s just another student.” 

Yoma shook her head, lapsing back into her own tongue again, muttering dire pronouncements he couldn’t understand. She hadn’t acted this upset when he’d come to Chynoo, but the language barrier between them was too much to explain what had set Yoma violently against Mara’s presence. 

“Problems?” Mara's voice carried across the hall. 

Yoma hissed something that sounded like a curse and hurried back into the kitchen. 

“I don’t know. I can’t speak her language, so…” He shrugged helplessly. “There’s nothing I can do.” 

She yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her hand—the one in the brace. “Does Jedi training always make you this tired?” 

Luke chuckled. “I’m exhausted too.” Even though he’d spent the afternoon in a healing trance, he felt as though he could barely keep his eyes open. “This work—it’s draining.” He didn’t want to discourage her, so he said: “It’ll get easier. You’ve got a lot of talent, despite what C’baoth says. It’ll get easier.” 

She nodded, yawning again. Noticing his stare, she glanced down at the brace. 

“I haven’t really needed it for a few days now,” she said, picking at the edge of the brace’s strap. “Probably should have taken it off on already.” 

“Let me,” he said, reaching for her. She let him take her hand in his. The complicated system of straps that held the medical device in place fell away as he slowly unwrapped her wrist. He felt a slight tremor run up her arm as he brushed a thumb over the delicate web of veins that showed blue through her pale skin, but she didn’t flinch away. 

When he looked up again, her eyes were fixed on his face, cheeks flushed. “How is it?” 

She dropped her gaze to her hand, and slowly rotated her wrist, probing at the joint with her other hand. 

“I’m sor—” he began. 

“I _know._ You don’t have to keep saying it. I’m fine.” 

He opened his mouth to say—he wasn’t sure what he was going to say—and she cut him off again. “Where am I sleeping tonight?” 

* * *

There were plenty of empty rooms in the south wing of the High Castle on the other end of the fortress from his own quarters. Mara had blinked out of his awareness once the ysalamir had been retrieved and placed in her room, and as soon as she closed the door, it was like she didn’t exist at all. He caught himself trying to stretch his senses across through the walls, a gesture that just came up empty. 

Luke wound his way through the corridors back to his own room. Just before he turned down the hall to his own room, the lights flickered and he paused, wondering if the power grid would fail and plunge him into darkness. He really did mean to fix the power grid before he left. The lights pulsed bright again, and he made his way around the final corner without mishap. 

To his surprise, C’baoth was standing by his door. “A word, Apprentice Skywalker, before you retire.” 

Luke swallowed a yawn. “Of course, Master C’baoth.” 

“Guard yourself around Apprentice Jade. I’m not entirely sure that we can trust her, and I’m concerned about your safety.” 

_But I do trust her,_ Luke thought— _why do I trust her?_ When they first met, she had wanted to kill him for destroying the life she had once had—a life enacting Palpatine’s will on the galaxy and murdering in his name. She had no loyalties to the New Republic and no reason to trust him, and she’d put her life in his hands when she’d come to Jomark. 

“Okay, Master C’baoth,” he said. “I’ll be careful.” 

* * *

Breakfast on Jomark consisted of a strong fish paste spread on a type of crispbread, served with a pudding made of leaves soaked in a sweet sauce. They ate in the great hall again, in the same seats they’d chosen the night before. Yoma put fresh crispbread in front of Luke and C’baoth, the fishy smell of the paste wafting up from the plates. When she reached Mara, she pulled something else out from under her jacket and placed it on the table in front of Mara. From where he was sitting, Luke couldn’t see what it was. 

“Thank you,” Mara said as she reached out and picked up the object. Only when Mara had lifted the object out of the way did Yoma place a plate of crispbread on the table in front of her and return to the kitchen. 

Luke leaned over to get a look at the object that Mara held in her hands, a small rectangular wooden talisman with a hole near the top so that it could be hung on a string. A fish with a sun bursting out of its belly was carved on one side of the charm, with a pair of fish jumping over the moon on the reverse. He’d seen similar designs throughout the High Castle; there was a series of fish totems carved into the lintel of the door to his room. 

“A good luck charm?” he asked. 

“Superstitious nonsense.” C’baoth gave a dismissive snort. “You must never forget that these people are primitives. Only with our guidance can they ever hope to achieve any real maturity.” 

“I wouldn’t call them primitive, Master C’baoth,” he said, wincing inwardly at C’baoth’s phrasing. “They might be superstitious, but they have modern technology, a reasonably efficient system of government—” 

“The trappings of civilization without the substance,” C’baoth said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Machines and societal constructs do not define a culture’s maturity. Maturity is defined solely by the understanding and use of the Force.” 

His eyes drifted away, as if peering into the past. “There was such a society once, though neither of you remembers it,” he said softly, his voice warm. “A vast and shining example of the heights all could aspire to. For a thousand generations we stood tall among the lesser beings of the galaxy, the guardians of justice and order. The creators of true civilization. The Senate could debate and pass laws; but it was the Jedi who turned those laws into reality.” His mouth twisted. “And in return, the galaxy destroyed us.” 

Luke frowned, glancing over at Mara. “I thought it was just the Emperor and Vader who exterminated the Jedi.” 

He wasn’t entirely sure how Mara fit into that equation. Given her age, he assumed that most of the Jedi were gone by the time she would have served as the Emperor’s personal agent. Which meant—what exactly? She’d still killed at his word. Why had the Emperor’s command brought him to her—had he planned for Mara to kill Luke and complete his extermination of the Jedi? 

C’baoth smiled bitterly. “Do you truly believe that even the Emperor could have succeeded in such a task without the consent of the entire galaxy?” He shook his head. “No, Apprentice Skywalker. They hated us—all the lesser beings did. Hated us for our power, and our knowledge, and our wisdom. Hated us for our maturity.” His smile vanished. “And that hatred still exists. Waiting only for the Jedi to reemerge to blaze up again. There are so few of us as it is. The endless war for power still rages—the galaxy is in turmoil. We who remain must stand together against those who would destroy everything. You two will be the first of my new Jedi.” 

Luke heard the echo of Kenobi’s words. _Last of the old Jedi, first of the new._ He was no longer alone—he had C’baoth’s guidance, Mara and Leia, and soon, Leia’s twins. 

He tried to catch Mara’s eye but she was focused on C’baoth, her face fixed in an expression of polite attentiveness, though there was a tight set to her mouth. 

Having finished his pudding, C’baoth pushed aside his plate. “After lunch, it is our usual custom for Luke and I attend to the people of this world, to bring peace and justice to their narrow, insular community. If you are finished with the tasks I have given you, Apprentice Mara, you may have a chance to join us in the village.” 

He rose from his seat. “Come, we shall meditate together this morning.” 

“I’ll be right there,” Mara said. “I want to talk to Skywalker first.” She seemed to brace herself for an argument, but C’baoth inclined his head graciously. 

“Of course. Remember what I told you last night, Apprentice Skywalker. I’ll see you both in the meditation room in twenty minutes.” 

Yoma came into the room to clear away the rest of the plates and Mara watched her uneasily. She picked up the charm Yoma had given her and slipped it into her jacket pocket. The old woman noticed the gesture and beamed. Mara glanced across the table at him. 

“We could talk in the solarium?” Luke suggested. 

“Sure.” 

Morning light streamed through the glass high in the ceiling of the solarium, a chill still lingering in the wide empty room. The hallway opened directly into the room, without a doorway to close the solarium off from the rest of that castle, but the mediation room where C’baoth had retreated was a floor down and closer to the front of the building. 

“This village talk is a waste of time,” Mara began, her voice brisk. “We only have a day left before I’m leaving, whether you come or not.” 

“I’m going to come with you,” Luke said. 

“He’s going to try and distract you, and we need to stay on course. No matter what he says. Will you back me up on this?” 

“Of course—” He yawned wide, his jaw cracking with a loud pop that seemed to echo across the empty space. “Sorry,” he mumbled, glancing down. 

“Still tired?” 

“It’s the strain of working on the command,” he explained. “It just takes it out of me.” 

She frowned. “I was tired last night, but I slept fine.” Her voice dropped to a mutter. “—Considering.” 

“Regular training isn’t as draining. It can even be invigorating.” He missed that feeling. “But... working on removing the command is exhausting.” 

“Are you always this tired when you finish a session with C’baoth?” 

“I guess so.” 

“Hmm.” Mara’s gaze was sharp. “Did you run a medical test?” 

“Of course I did. It’s just the process—” 

“I want to test something,” she interrupted. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.” 

He assumed it would take her a few minutes to return to her room, longer if she went back to her ship, though it sounded like whatever she needed was still in the castle. He wandered toward the center of the room. The solarium was still, sepulchral, silent—except for the whisper at the back of his head...

“The ysalamir is dead.”

His head jerked back toward the doorway. “What?”

“I found it dead in my room.” Mara’s voice was clear, her words clipped and precise in her rage. “C’baoth must have killed it after I went down for breakfast.” 

“Are you sure it didn’t just die?” 

“It was pulled off of its frame. They can’t survive being separated from a nutrient source, and ysalamir don’t just commit suicide like that.” 

“It could have been a villager. They have access to the High Castle.” It didn’t make sense for Yoma to do such a thing, even if she had been behaving strangely since Mara’s arrival. 

“It was C’baoth.” 

“You can’t be sure.” 

“I’m sure.” Her mouth was a grim line. “He’s fucking with your head, Skywalker. He’s doing something in the Force—the fatigue you’ve been suffering isn’t natural. We have to get you out of here.” 

“I wouldn’t make such accusations if I were you, Apprentice Jade.” 

Mara spun toward C’baoth’s voice. The Jedi master had entered the solarium from the same side door he had used the day before, an uncanny echo of the previous day. Luke wasn’t sure where that particular hallway led, and it occurred to him that he’d never thought to check. He’d been so tired, and distracted...

“You killed the ysalamir.” 

C’baoth simply raised an eyebrow. “Of course I did, Apprentice Jade. You were using it as an excuse to leave here even though your training had not been completed.” 

“But Master C’baoth—” Luke said. “You’re putting Mara in danger—”

“She is in no danger here. As long as you stay here, you are both under my protection.” 

“You _lied_ to us,” Mara said. 

“I only offered you the information you needed, _Apprentice_.” 

“I’m not your apprentice,” Mara snapped. “We’re leaving.” 

“No,” C’baoth said. “You will not leave until you have finished your training. I will prevent it.” 

Her voice dropped to a snarl. “The gates of hell you will.” 

“And how do you plan to stop me, Apprentice? Do you wish to test your powers against mine?” 

“There’s also this,” Mara said. She raised her blaster and pointed it at C’baoth. 

C’baoth tipped back his head and laughed, as though Mara were a child threatening him with a temper tantrum. Confused by C’baoth’s reaction, Luke looked over at Mara. 

“He took the powerpack out of my blaster, too,” Mara told him, her gaze still fixed on her target. Luke could see a powerpack slotted into the side of the weapon she held in her hands; it looked live. 

A smirk tugged at the corner of Mara’s mouth. “When Yoma gave me the talisman this morning, she also slipped me a power pack.” She tilted her head. “It was an Imperial power pack. Brand new. How did a _brand new_ Imperial blaster pack turn up on Jomark?” 

C’baoth made a _tching_ sound. “I do not concern myself with such irrelevancies.” 

“I do. Did you know that C’baoth has been working with the Imperials, Skywalker? That he reports to Thrawn?” 

That sickening drop in his stomach wasn’t disbelief—it wasn’t even shock. It was disappointment. “Are you sure about that?” 

“Thrawn had the coordinates to Jomark listed in his files, and there’s an Imperial beacon on the island in the lake. That’s how I found this place.” 

“I won’t tolerate this insubordination, Apprentice Jade,” C’baoth said softly. “As I told you before, no one points a weapon at me with impunity.” 

Luke felt a surge of power that seemed to fill the solarium around C’baoth like an electric charge humming through the air. The blaster jerked out of Mara’s hand and flew across the room until it hovered in the air near C’baoth. 

“C’baoth, Mara, wait—” Luke took a step forward, and felt C’baoth’s presence brush up against his mind. The contact lasted no more than a moment, and then it was gone—completely gone—and the command thundered to life. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

_No, NO._ Luke scrambled frantically at the remains of the shielding as it fell away. The command raged louder, impossibly loud, swirling through him and stripping away his self-control. He had to fight to hold on to that small part of himself that he alone commanded, that quiet place where the compulsion couldn’t touch him. 

_There_ —he could still sense the pattern that he and C’baoth used to lead him out of the storm; to weave the shield in his head that buffered him from the command. 

He could do this. He had to. Mara’s life depended on it. 

Although he knew that only seconds had passed, it felt as though he were moving through a morass that almost pulled him under as he painstakingly rebuilt a shelter around his mind. Bit by bit, the command began to fade again, slipping back into the corner of his mind where it had retreated under C’baoth’s guidance. 

His hands smacked against the floor as his knees gave out. He was breathing hard, harsh in the quiet of the solarium. He looked up at C’baoth and saw the Jedi Master watching him calmly, as though this were a simple test. 

“C’baoth,” Mara said. As C’baoth turned his gaze back toward her, the blaster twitched, shivering in midair for a split second before sailing back across the room, smacking into Mara’s hand. She fired two stun bolts into his chest and the Jedi Master crumpled to the ground. 

Luke stared at Mara, his mouth agape. He pulled himself, stumbling, to his feet and rushed over to the prone body of the Jedi master. If C’baoth’s heart had gone out… No, C’baoth was alive, his breath shallow but pulse steady under Luke’s fingers. 

He heard Mara come up behind him. “Move out of the way,” she said. 

He looked up; her blaster was raised, though it wasn’t pointed at him. “What are you doing?”

“Finishing the job,” she said, lowering the blaster at C’baoth’s head. 

“No!” Luke used the Force to yank the blaster up. 

Mara flinched but kept her hold on the weapon. _“What_ are you _doing?”_

“You can’t kill him.” 

She scowled. “He’s colluding with Imperials, not to mention kriffing with your head.” 

“He’s an old man, not in his right mind. You can’t just execute him.” 

“It’s stupid to leave an enemy at your back,” she snarled. 

“He doesn’t have to be an enemy. After all this is done, we can get him help. He needs healing, and I—I need his help.” 

“Fine.” He let go of the blaster, and she let it drop to her side but didn’t holster it. “Don’t blame me if saving him backfires on you.” She stalked toward the entrance to the solarium. “We need to go before he wakes up again.” 

Luke stood. There was nothing more he could do for C’baoth right now. They could return, later, with ysalamiri and a medical team. 

He had a promise to keep. 

First, he had to convince Artoo to take the X-wing back to Coruscant without him. The droid grumbled as Luke fixed the coordinates on the X-wing’s nav computer and sealed the cockpit. “I’ve got to help Mara, Artoo. We’ll meet you back home after we’ve picked up Karrde.” 

An exasperated series of chirps followed that statement, and Luke knew that Artoo would have even more to say on the topic when he found out exactly _where_ he and Mara were headed. 

Mara was already firing the engines when he boarded the Skipray. There was a small cargo hold, empty, at the top of the ramp, and beyond the hold a narrow hallway with the crew’s quarters on either side. He passed a small communal area with a galley and an even tinier medical bay before he reached the cockpit and dropped into the co-pilot’s seat. 

He felt alert—alert and in full command of his senses for the first time since he’d landed on Jomark. The command was still there, muted and humming at the back of his head and he wasn’t sure he could hold it without C’baoth’s assistance, but the fact that he’d been able to wrest control from the compulsion on his own gave him hope. 

The ship shuddered as it lifted up from the surface of Jomark. Mara didn’t look at him until she’d finished the take-off sequence and they’d cleared the planet’s atmosphere. 

“Are you ready for this?” Her voice was soft, wary. The ship’s engine hummed around them as the Skipray coasted into the void of space. 

“I’m ready.” 

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

Although Mara pushed the Skipray’s engines to the very edge of their capabilities, they still had three days of travel before they reached the Wistril system. Luke double-checked the figures on the navigating computer, but Mara’s calculations had been meticulous, and there was no other way that he could see to push the ship any faster. Three days. 

“Two and half,” he reassured her. 

Her lips tightened and she stared out at the streaming silver lines of hyperspace for a moment before she said, “we might still be too late.”

“You said we have a few days.” 

“Karrde…I know what they’ll do to him.” She went silent for a moment, gaze still on the viewport, before she began again. “Smart people think that they can resist torture—that they can _out-think_ it, but they can’t. They can’t.” 

He knew enough about Imperial torture procedures from his years in the Rebellion—reports and debriefings and stories, from friends and family who had first-hand experience. He wondered for a moment if her knowledge came from second-hand accounts as well, or if she’d been present at an Imperial torture session. 

He didn’t want to know. 

“If they aren’t in a hurry to extract information, they’ll take their time with him, and it hasn’t been that long,” he said. It was standard procedure for that class of prisoner to start with a softening up stage: isolation and sleep deprivation. “If Thrawn’s distracted, it might buy us a few more days.” 

“We can’t depend on that.” 

Before he could reply—offer some sort of empty reassurance—she unclipped the crash webbing and swung out of her seat. Turning back to the console, he reviewed their course one more time. 

“Thank you.” 

He looked up to see Mara framed in the doorway to the cockpit, her hand on the doorframe. 

“Thank you for agreeing to rescue Karrde,” she clarified, as if he might not understand her intent. “I can’t do this alone.” She didn’t have to say that she would have gone alone, if she thought she had any chance of rescuing Karrde on her own, but the chances of both of them coming back alive were slim. 

“All you had to do was ask,” he said simply. 

“Right. The Jedi thing.” 

It wasn’t _just_ the Jedi thing—at least, not the way she meant it. “It’s the least I can do to thank you for rescuing me from C’baoth.” 

“C’baoth is scum,” she said, her upper lip curling. “Someone needed to stop him.” 

“Yeah…” He dropped his head, his face growing hot. There was no way she didn’t think him naive for trusting C’baoth for so long in spite of what he could see now as clear warning signals. The unnatural fatigue, the way that C’baoth had strung him along with small tidbits of information. It seemed obvious in retrospect. 

C’baoth’s mental instability had been genuine—Luke was sure about that—and he still hoped that C’baoth might recover under the care of medical professionals, though what Mara had told him about C’baoth’s ties to the Empire was troubling. If the Empire was aware of the existence of a powerful, unstable Force user, they wouldn’t let him live in peace on an obscure planet for long. If the Jedi master was already working for the Empire, then Luke had walked right into a trap and _invited_ C’baoth into his head. 

Mara didn’t offer any response, and when he looked up again, she was gone. 

He remained in the copilot’s seat, staring out at the blue stream of hyperspace without really seeing it. Three days. He needed to control the compulsion for three days, in the close quarters of a single ship without a ysalamir to protect Mara. The magnitude of that task dredged up a heavy fog of dread that seemed to hover, cold and malicious, above his head. The command still hummed at the back of his mind, occasionally jolting through his consciousness like a flash of lightning. 

He assumed that the Skipray came from Karrde’s fleet; it was clean and in good repair, but it had none of the personal touches of a private spacecraft, and while the Skipray had a lot of power for a small ship, it didn’t have much room for conveniences. It was only a few steps down a narrow hallway to the lounge. Tucked in one corner was a couch that curved around a table—much like the one on the _Millennium Falcon_ —and behind it, a small galley was tucked behind a bulkhead. 

Mara stood in front of the round table, datapads strewn across the surface and a holo of a Star Destroyer schematic hovering in the air before her. It wasn’t a map of Thrawn’s flagship, but of her sister ship _Retribution,_ and he recognized a New Republic Intelligence watermark on the holo. Karrde’s slicers, whoever they were, were good. It was a close enough match of the _Chimaera_ for their purposes. 

“According to the flight schedule, the _Chimaera_ will be taking on supplies in the Wistril system,” Mara said, glancing up at him. “We should be able to get there a few hours ahead of them. We’ll ditch the Skipray, take charge of one of the supply shuttles, and just go on up with the rest of the flight pattern.” 

“What happens after we’re aboard?” 

“Standard Imperial procedure is to keep all the shuttle crews locked aboard their ships while the _Chimaera’s_ crewers handle the unloading,” Mara said. “Or at least that was standard procedure five years ago. Means we’ll need some kind of diversion to get out of the shuttle.”

“Sounds risky.” Luke shook his head. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

“You got any better ideas?” 

Luke shrugged. “Not yet.” 

Sitting at one end of the curved couch, Luke looked over the datapads laid out on the table. The closest one had a list of Imperial schedules displayed on its screen, another had what seemed to be a series of notes Mara had written analyzing the situation. She had listed variables and run the odds on various approaches, but she hadn’t laid out a strong line of attack. 

Mara was still focused on the holomap. The holo cast her features in a blue tinge, and the dream he’d had the night she’d arrived on Jomark flashed through his head. In the dream, her features had been illuminated by the green of his lightsaber, minutes before he’d used the Force to collapse her windpipe. Luke shivered. Mara pressed a button on the holoprojector and the image of the star destroyer dissolved into a schematic of the ship’s detention center. 

“How far is the hanger deck from the detention center?” he asked. 

The map shifted to display the route between the hangar deck and the Star Destroyer’s detention center, and the familiar hexagonal lines of an Imperial detention center spread out in the air over the table. Mara took him over the route, which she had clearly studied in great depth on her way to Jomark. 

“What’s on the floor below the hangar deck?” he asked when she’d finished. 

“A service supply area.” The image shifted again, the area below the hangar deck coming into focus. 

Luke reached for the shift schedule datapad. Before he could scan through the list, Mara spoke. “Most of the people who’d normally be working there are a level up helping unload the shuttles.” 

“If we cut through the floor of the shuttle and hangar deck, it would get us into the Star Destroyer without going through the door and setting off any alarms.”

“Through the hull of a shuttle? That would take forever—oh.” She looked unimpressed. “Can you really cut through the hull with a lightsaber?” 

“I don’t see why not.” 

She raised her eyebrows. “Okay.” 

He made a gesture at the map. “Where do we go next once we get out of the shuttle?” 

“There’s a turbolift here—” She pointed to the holo map. “On the other side of the crew quarters.” The turbolift cluster was surrounded by six pilot ready rooms. “We can steal uniforms or flight suits from one of the TIE fighter ready rooms by the turbolift.” 

Passing as deck crew was one thing, not drawing the attention of a room full of fighter pilots was another. “How are we going to sneak the uniforms past that many people?” 

“What do you think? Just tell me which room has the fewest people in it and then get out of the way. I’ll do the rest.” 

Part of him wanted to see that—but... “But we can’t charge in fighting. If our cover is blown we won’t have time to make it out.” He was wary about active use of the Force, but in this case he could probably risk it. “I think I can suppress their curiosity enough for me to walk in, take the flight suits, and leave.” 

“What if you can’t? We’ll have lost whatever surprise we would have had.”

“If it doesn’t work, we can go back to your plan.” 

“Fine,” she said with a shrug, looking down at the holomap controls. “Once we get inside I’ll have access to the main computer system. If I can fiddle the records and transfer orders, we ought to be able to get Karrde out before anyone realizes they’ve been had. Can you pull the same trick with the Force in the detention center control room?” 

Luke shook his head. “I don’t think the suppression trick will work on detention center guards—they’re bound to be too alert.”

The map expanded again, highlighting the turbolift route toward the detention center, running to the far aft section of the ship. Engineering was located directly below the center, and below that the ship’s massive sublight drive thrust nozzles. But between them...

“I know how we can get to Karrde’s cell without going past the control center. May I?” 

She lifted her hands from the map controls and slid the holoprojector across the table. He adjusted the map until it displayed the maintenance levels. 

“There are trash compactors located directly below the detention center. They aren’t guarded or rigged with alarms.” He explained how the compression of the compactor walls pressed the garbage up above the level of the door, and if the walls were stopped at just the right moment, it would leave a space wide enough for him to climb up the chute and cut through the grating between the waste system and the detention center. Like the Death Star, in reverse. 

“Like chimney rock climbing on Tatooine,” he concluded. 

Of all his ideas, Mara was least impressed with this one. 

“A _garbage_ chute?” 

“It’s completely unguarded. Karrde and I come back the way we came and no one will even notice he’s missing until we’re gone.” 

“Bringing the smell with you.” 

She had a point. The smell was probably worse than he remembered. “Maybe that can work in our favor. We don’t want anyone getting close enough to identify us. You won’t even have to get close to the chute, since we need someone to control the garbage contractor from outside. I’ll do it alone.” 

They argued the point until Luke’s stomach began to rumble. Mara closed down the holomap, but picked up one of the datapads to read while they ate, with the clear intent to ignore him. When she finished her meal, she stood, tossed out her plate, and began to collect the holoprojector and her datapads. 

“No, please stay. I’d like to talk to you.” 

“About what?” Mara frowned at him. 

_About anything. I could talk about anything with you_. Instead, he said: “About what happened on Jomark.”

“Why?” She dropped the datapads back on the table and crossed her arms, eyebrows raised. 

“I—” Taken aback, he wasn’t sure where to begin. “I’m sorry about what happened with C’baoth.” 

“It’s not your fault that he’s unhinged, power-mad ke’dem droyk.” 

He huffed a laugh. It was a more vulgar phrase than he would have thought to call C’baoth. “I know. I was so desperate to find a solution to the Emperor’s command, that I didn’t pay attention to the warning signs and I put you in a bad situation. I’m sorry about that. I should have—I should have seen it in C’baoth...” 

Leia and Han sometimes took him to task for always believing the best of people, but he had trusted himself to always be able to sense the limits of that goodwill. And now—now that faith was fraying away. If his ability to trust his own instincts dissolved, then what was left of him? 

“What if he doesn’t stay put?” Mara asked. “The Empire isn’t going to let him play local liege on that planet forever.” 

“I—I don’t know. He has the ability to use the Force in ways I can’t. I can’t even imagine.” 

C’baoth was a full-fledged master of the old Order, who had studied the Force his entire life, and could practice the Jedi arts with skill and subtlety. Luke spoke aloud the thought that had haunted him ever since they had left the High Castle. “What if I can’t keep him out of my head?” He looked up into Mara’s face, knowing that his own was strained and pleading, and he saw something akin to sympathy flicker in hers. 

She chewed her lip, watching him without speaking. There was something in the look she gave him across the table that suggested that she was weighing a choice she had to make. 

“Mara?” 

She glanced down at the table, her fingers drifting forward to scratch at an imagined speck on the surface. “There’s a technique the Emperor taught me,” she began. “I thought I’d lost it, but I began to remember it while I was training with C’baoth.” She looked up again, catching his eye. “It’s a way of hiding your thoughts from another Force user.” 

“Oh,” he said, realization dawning. “You used it while you were training with C’baoth.” 

_Mara lacks mental aptitude,_ C’baoth had said. _She doesn’t have a facility for making connections._

“You were resisting him.” 

“I think he was too self-absorbed to notice. You leave your surface thoughts unguarded—let your opponent sense them.” Her brow furrowed. “You build this...it’s like a transparent _shield_ —behind that first layer of your mind.” 

“Like a smokescreen.” 

She nodded. “Yeah.” 

“Show me.” He lifted his hands. For a moment, she stared at him, sitting there with his hands held out to her. 

“I can control it,” he promised. He stood and cleared the table in two steps. She took a step back and he froze in place, arms in an aborted half-gesture. 

“Please. I’d like you to show me. We don’t have to be touching—I just thought it would be easier to make a connection that way.” He winced a little at his speech, but Mara just tilted her head back a little, a smirk sliding onto her face. 

“Now this is more of what I thought Jedi training would be like: holding hands and talking about connecting through the psychic plane.” 

It made him smile back at her, a faint attempt that slipped away as she slid her blaster out of her holster, flipped it to stun and placed it on the table beside her. 

He hadn’t touched her since Myrkr. She’d stayed out of his personal space on Myrkr, too, with a few exceptions, one of which flashed back as she stepped in front of him, her eyes watching his hands as he held them up, palms flat like a supplicant. 

_“Not a move,”_ she’d hissed in his ear back on Myrkr, her breath ghosting across his cheek. _“Not a sound.”_ Her blaster had been cold and heavy against his jaw, her body warm as she pressed close to his back. 

His eyes were drawn to her lips, parted as she drew in a deep breath— _kriff._ This _wasn’t_ the time or the place or the _dimension_ for _that_ —for the images that flickered through his head in that instant and were shoved back down into a corner of his mind. She’d never allow him to lay a finger on her even if he hadn’t smashed her face into the side of a shuttle and then tried to murder her. 

Then she let out the breath, and grasped his offered hands. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

Mara jerked back, eyes wide. 

“Sorry—I’m sorry. I can control it.” 

“That’s his voice,” she breathed.

“You heard it?” 

“Yes.” Before he could drop his hands again, she slid her hands back across his palms. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

He tried to pull back, but she held on, her head bobbing in a sharp nod. “That’s his voice. I never thought I’d hear it again.” 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The command repeated like a faulty recording, echoing through the fragile link between them. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

Her gaze shifted toward the blaster. 

“No—no. It’s fine. It’s not at full power. I’m still in control. Just—just show me what you did to hide your mind from C’baoth. I can follow along.” 

He took a breath as he sunk into himself, reaching into the quiet place in his mind and pulling it up like a barrier between his inner self and the thrum of the compulsion. It felt like ducking his head underwater. Once submerged, the command became muted and distant. 

He was in control. It was fine. It would be fine. 

He wasn’t alone. Mara was there alongside him, her luminous presence like a beam of light lancing through the water. 

_Ready for this, Skywalker?_

Her voice in his mind was as dry as it would be in the flesh—utterly her. As her mind brushed against his, he a caught glimpse of sharp, ordered lines of thought—and for some reason, the smell of singed metal—

_Like this._

He was struck by the precision of her technique—the smokescreen was simple yet elegant, and without knowing what she was doing ahead of time, he would have never sensed the barrier, like an opaque screen between the stream of her surface thoughts and the undercurrent of her deeper self. 

Less like a shield and more like—

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

Luke wrenched himself away with a gasp, staggering backwards, blind with panic. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE—

Mara had backed into the corner, blaster raised, lips stretched tight and white. He could rush her before she made the shot, slam her head against the bulkhead, draw his lightsaber and finish the job. Dump the body out of the airlock. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE—

 _Luke._ Mara’s voice, clear and steady. Her lips hadn’t moved. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE

Away. He had to get away from her. 

He threw himself into the passageway that led to the bunkroom, skidding on the floor and slamming into the side of the hallway, hard enough for stars to burst in front of his eyes. The pain cut through the noise in his head and he slammed the side of his head into the cold metal of the wall again, just to give himself a second to hold on. 

He was shattering—fragmenting—as the compulsion burned through him. 

_Find your center. Find your center. Find your center._

He burrowed deep within himself, trying to escape the hammering of the command, until he found enough quiet to use C’baoth’s technique and call up the mental shields that protected him from the maelstrom inside his own head. 

_I am Luke Skywalker. I AM LUKE SKYWALKER. I am in control._

When he came back to himself he was heaving deep breaths in and out, curled into a tight ball on the floor in the corner of the room. He swallowed down the bile that rushed up his throat as he eased into a sitting position. 

There was blood smeared across the floor. Lifting a shaking hand he probed at the side of his head where he’d smashed it against the wall. His blood, not Mara’s. That was all that mattered. 

He’d failed her, again. He had been wrong, _wrong._ The rage he always kept carefully in check surged through him and he slammed his fist against the floor with a howl. He let the anger live in him for a few long moments until he could feel the familiar caress of the dark side, like a cold whisper threading through the chaos in his head. 

_No. I am in control._ The technique he’d been taught for freeing his body from the grip of anger came easy to him these days—or it did most of the time. It should have. He felt as though he’d been hit on the head too many times, and whatever he reached for just slipped out of his fumbling fingers. 

_I am in control. I am in control. I am in control. I am in control._

The intercom crackled. “Hey.” Mara’s voice was soft through the fuzz of the comm. “Farmboy? Are you still with me?” 

He staggered over to the intercom. “Yes. I’m still in control.” There was a pause. “I promise.” 

“If you were lying to me to get me to open the door, would I be able to tell?” 

He felt sick. 

“You have a point,” he admitted after another pause. “But...it would be faster for me to break through the lock than lure you in with a lie.” His lightsaber still hung from his belt, and had been since he’d left Jomark, and if he hadn’t dampened the compulsion in time...

“That’s reassuring,” Mara said drily. 

“I’m sorry. I’ll try the technique again—reinforce my shields—” 

“No,” Mara said. “Wait.” She paused for a moment. “Wasn’t it easier for you to control the command after you’d slept? Or gone into a trance or whatever. You seemed almost normal in the morning.” 

She was right. He exhaled, letting his head fall back against the bunk. 

“You did the right thing,” she said. “You didn’t hurt me. I think you’re getting better at stopping yourself before it takes hold. And you came back fast.” 

Did she really believe that? He shook his head even though she wasn’t there to see it. 

“You should still lock me in,” he said. “I’m going to leave my lightsaber in the hall first. Please hide it until we reach the _Chimaera_.” 

“Alright. Rest up. I’ll wake you up when it’s your turn to take watch.” 

The intercom clicked off. There was a small medkit in the locker at the foot of the bed, enough to patch up the scrape on the side of his head. It had stopped bleeding, but was tender and swollen, and his hand felt bruised. 

Once he’d slipped the lightsaber into the hall and sealed the door to his cabin again, he dropped onto the small bunk. The fatigue he’d suffered on Jomark has been C’baoth’s doing, but the constant effort it took to hold back the command had a way of wringing him out until he felt like the effort it took to keep standing was insurmountable. 

Three days. Two and half, now. 

And then back again, from the _Chimaera_ to whatever port that Karrde led them. 

He could control it. He had to. 

* * *

Stars glittered against the void of space through the vast windows behind the Emperor’s throne, the throne itself a black silhouette where nothing could shine. The floor beneath Luke’s feet reflected like glass, and the walls and high ceiling of the room disappeared into the dark. Luke was drawn forward, toward the hunched, cloaked figure who sat in shadow. He shivered as the Sith Lord’s piercing yellow gaze turned on him, his cracked lips curving upwards. Satisfaction poured out and smothered Luke like a viscous poison. 

He was in Luke’s head; he was everywhere. 

“So you come to do my bidding at last, young Skywalker,” the Emperor said, his voice rasping in the dead quiet of the throne room. 

Bone-white fingers beckoned him closer. The protests that he longed to scream at the sick parasite who had claimed his mind died at the back of his throat. He moved forward like a puppet.

“You know what I called you here to do.” 

He sensed Mara’s presence before he saw her. 

Her boots shone as she stepped out of the shadows. She wore an Imperial officer’s uniform without rank, the stiff jacket and jodhpurs a pristine black, her hair pinned back tightly against her head. Of all the things she’d worn in his subconscious, the Imperial uniform was the most unsettling. 

“Come here, my child.” 

Her face went curiously blank—almost vacant—as she approached the throne like a sleepwalker. The Emperor lifted a hand and brushed it across her cheek. 

“You have served your purpose, child. Go.” 

She moved as lightly as though she were drifting through an updraft as she turned away from the Emperor, stepped forward, and knelt at Luke’s feet. 

“Snap her neck,” the Emperor hissed. 

_No, no, no, no,_ Luke’s mind protested, but his hands moved against his will, resting on either side of her head in a motion that was almost a caress. She didn’t plead for her own life; she didn’t even flinch and his hands moved to grip her throat in order to wrench it around and break her neck in a single motion. Her face was still absent, without expression.

Before he delivered the blow that would kill her lips moved. 

“Luke,” she said. 

_“Luke.”_

The throne room vanished as he jerked awake. 

“Luke.” 

Before he had even grasped that he was in his bunk on the Skipray he knew that she was nearby, close enough to touch. His eyes flew open and there she was, hovering over him, a concerned look on her face. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

His arm shot out and managed to tangle in her hair, and with a swift yank her neck was with reach, his other hand shooting up to encircle it. Before his right hand reached its target, Mara threw her elbow into his sternum and used her other arm to block his. The blow to his chest stunned him just enough for her to wrest her head free of his grip. He heard her grunt as his knee hit her ribs and then she pulled at his shoulder and flipped him out of the bunk and onto the floor. 

The impact of the cold metal floor against the front of his body ripped a cry of shock from him. Mara’s knee dug into his back, her arm pinning his shoulders down. He stilled as he waited for the command’s hold on him to ebb. 

_Find your center. My name is Luke Skywalker. The Force is with me._

_I am in control. I am in control._

After a few minutes, Mara leaned in close. “In control?” she asked, her breath skating across his ear. 

He could feel the heat of her body on top of him and arousal flooded through him, followed by an almost nauseating rush of shame. A few more minutes ticked by before he nodded, and Mara slowly moved off of him. He rolled on to his side and pushed himself up so he was sitting on the floor with his back against the bunk. 

“Are you alright?” she asked. 

He looked down at his hands; there were red-gold strands still between his fingers. 

“I’m—I’m so sorry, Mara.” 

“Don’t be. I half expected it,” she said, rubbing at her head. “You’re fast.” She tossed him a rueful smile, which didn’t help ease the guilt churning in his stomach. 

He dropped his head, scrubbing his hands through his hair. “What if I can’t hold it back?” 

“Then I’ll shoot you.” She leaned back against the wall and slid down until she was seated across from him, her arms propped on her knees, limbs loose and ready in case she needed to move into action again. 

“What if that’s not enough?” 

Mara didn’t answer. So much for his control being stronger when he woke up. He swiped at his eyes, rubbing away the sting of threatening tears. He’d promised her he could control himself, he’d _promised._

With a quiet groan, he tipped his head back against the edge of the bunk. Self-pity was a doorway to the dark side as well. When he closed his eyes, he saw her in the black uniform, bending her head to accept the touch of the Emperor’s hand on her cheek. 

It was only a dream, he told himself. He felt as though he had seen something he wasn’t meant to see, and he wished he hadn’t. _It was only a dream._

Her gaze was still on him when he opened his eyes again. She was wearing an olive flight suit, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and a grey undershirt covering her arms to the wrists. Where the flight suit was unbuttoned and the undershirt hung loose he glimpsed the curve of her collarbones. A thin leather cord—a necklace—fell over her collarbones and dangled down into her undershirt. 

“He really kriffed you over, didn’t he?” she said quietly, her expression softening. She wasn’t expecting an answer, and Luke only chuckled humorlessly, his breath catching in his throat. 

Silence stretched between them; Mara showed no sign of leaving, though she didn’t move any closer to him. 

“How...old were you when you started training with the Emperor?” he asked. 

“I’m not sure...I don’t remember my life before, not really. I was raised in the Imperial Palace.” Her eyes were a darker, murky green in the dim light of the cabin. “I served him. Completely. My entire life was... _constructed_ around service to him. All the tutors, training, lessons… Ever since I can remember.”

He was quiet, waiting for her to continue. 

“He trained me to use the Force, a little. You know that already. I learned how to hear his voice anywhere in the galaxy. I...killed people for him. They might not have been good people, but I did it. I did it without even questioning it.” 

He could almost taste the bitter emotion that seeped from her, hanging heavy around her like the fog that had haunted him since leaving Jomark. 

“I would have done anything for him. I know how it sounds. When he died—” She cut herself off. There were still things about her past she wasn’t ready to share yet, and Luke could accept that. He could be patient. 

She was quiet for a few minutes, her expression distant. 

“Why do you think the Emperor wanted me to kill you?” he finally asked. 

“Tying up loose ends, I suppose,” she said, her tone flat. “Disposing of any tools that he left behind.” 

“You’re not a tool.” Her phrasing left an ugly taste in his mouth. “You must have meant something to him.” 

An expression moved over her face and was gone; something both hopeful and wounded. “On the _Chimaera,_ Thrawn told me that I wasn’t Palpatine’s only Hand; he said that I was one of many. I wasn’t special.” She huffed out a breath. “I didn’t want to believe him. But if there were other Hands, maybe this was his way of getting rid of us. All of us.” 

“I don’t think so,” Luke said. “It’s more than that. The command isn’t telling me to kill anyone else.” 

“Maybe you just haven’t met any of the other Hands. Maybe any of them would have triggered it.” She snorted. “I don’t think he put that much value in me. If he lied to me about the other Hands, then he didn’t trust me at all. He trusted _Thrawn_.” Her lip curled into a sneer. “Thrawn said that I was nothing but a glorified assassin, with no special bond with the Emperor. I was just another happy little servant.” Her laugh was an ugly thing, harsh and hollow. 

He didn’t dare compare his situation to hers, but he knew a little of the sickening shame that came with craving the approval of someone who’d betrayed you. Of someone who was a monster.

Of someone who was dead. 

“I don’t think it’s just that,” he said. “This is—the command—it’s—it’s destroying me. And that’s exactly what he would have wanted.” 

Mara hmmed, thoughtful. “He had visions, you know.” Luke nodded. “He’d talk about them sometimes. Maybe he saw…something in the Force.” 

“He knew that our paths would cross?” 

“Maybe.” She laughed again, bleak and humorless. “Or maybe you just got the wrong name. Who the kriff knows.” 

He wished he could close the distance between them—not because the compulsion had willed him to kill her with his bare hands, but just to—just to touch her. To take her hand in his, and let her know through the press of fingers that he was there for her. 

To tangle his fingers in her hair, pull her close and wrap his hand around her neck, so thin and vulnerable— _no_. _No._ Kriff. It was bleeding into his thoughts again. Shuddering, he dropped his head, a queasy feeling shivering through him. Felt for the shields and made sure they were still holding. 

“Hey.” Mara kicked his foot lightly with the toe of her boot. He looked up again. Her head was tilted, watching him. “Your turn to take watch.” Her lips twitched as though she were about to say something else, but the expression on her face slipped away and she pushed herself to her feet instead. “I’ll seal myself in the other bunk room, but do you think you can hold out until your watch is over?” 

“Yes. I think so.” He prodded at the shields; they held, like a cocoon around the small island of calm at the center of his being. The edges of that island were slowly being eroded away by the compulsion, dimmed to a muted roar at the back of his head, but for the most part, the shields were holding. He didn’t think the command would take him unawares again, not for another day. Hopefully more. He’d shore up his defenses again throughout the day, regardless. 

“Okay. I’ll see you later, Skywalker.” 

He called out to her before she left the bunkroom. “Can we talk again later? We can do it over the comms if that would make you feel safer.” 

For a moment he thought she was going to refuse, but then she shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.” 

He sat on the floor for a few more long minutes after she’d left and sealed herself into the ship’s other bunkroom before he got to his feet and made his way back to the cockpit to start his watch. 


	6. Chapter 6

The interior of every Imperial starship and station looked the same, Luke thought. _Lifeless._ Cold grey corridors stretched ahead of them, set in precise lines and lit by banks of harsh fluorescents, the white light reflected in the slick black floors under their feet. 

Lifeless, pristine killing machines. His eyes itched for a splash of color, an iota of warmth, but the only brightness in those corridors was the flame of Mara’s hair, pulled back in a neat Imperial-regulation bun at the nape of her neck. 

If returning to the _Chimaera_ bothered Mara, she didn’t let it show on her face—but Luke didn’t need the Force to sense the tension strung through her like a taut wire. He felt the same; his adrenaline kicking up the moment his boots hit the floor of the Star Destroyer. 

He was careful not to get close enough to touch her. The technique that C’baoth had taught him was holding—so far. The voice in his head was no more than a distant whisper, but it still pressed insidiously at the edges of his mind, as if searching for a way in. He could hold it back. He had to. 

He and Mara both wore plain flight suits in a dull brown shade that Mara had pulled out of a storage cabinet in the Skipray and stripped free of any insignia. Not quite the Imperial brown of a lower-deck crewer, but close enough that they might pass at first glance. Luke had clipped his lightsaber to an engineer’s toolbelt, hoping that any passerby would mistake it for a spanner among the other tools that hung from the wide strap. Mara kept her blaster belt. Luke hoped she wouldn’t be forced to use it. 

Before they left the Skipray, Mara had looked him over and approved the disguise—such as it was—though he knew that nothing about them would pass an actual inspection. He still wasn’t sure if carrying a lightsaber was a wise idea—but Mara needed a Jedi to rescue Karrde. 

She had him. 

No one had challenged them—yet. The service supply area below the hangar where the Skipray was parked was deserted—most of the crew that worked on this level were up on the deck unloading the supply shuttles. Right on schedule. 

The crew quarters were just beyond the service supply area, and from there it was a short walk to the pilot ready rooms, where Luke would sneak in and steal a couple of flight suits, just as they’d planned. 

The corridors closer to the crew quarters were more populated than the supply area had been, and they passed a few crewers in the halls who gave them brief, uninterested glances. Every single time, Luke felt his pulse jump and his shoulder tighten; he had to will himself to keep his hands loose at his sides. 

Mara pulled out a datapad as they came to a junction between two hallways, and they lingered in the crossway, heads bent together over the datapad as though they were discussing a work order. Six pilots were grouped around the turbolifts, their conversation audible even at the far end of the corridor where Luke and Mara stood. The ready rooms were located near the turbolifts on either side of the hall. 

“I’m going to check and see if there’s an empty room,” Luke said, drifting back into the left-hand corridor and out of sight of the turbolifts. Mara followed him, her hand moved to her blaster, a finger snapping the stun on. 

Tentatively, he opened himself to the Force, pulling on the power he needed to sense the individuals in the rooms ahead. It was like turning up the volume on the command; YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE hammered into his head. 

He stretched out his senses, down the corridor and into the ready rooms on the other end of the hall, counting the number of beings in each room, one by one. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. Commanding, insistent. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

She was so close—just within reach. There was no way she could draw in time—it would be over quickly—

YOU WILL KILL MARA— 

He broke off his search and retreated back behind his shields, frantically shoring up his defenses. As the command ebbed again he sagged against the wall, fists and eyes clenched tight. Fighting off the grip of the command had been easier in the relative security of the High Castle and with C’baoth’s support—at least at first—to help stabilize his mind against the compulsion. It was far more difficult to focus in the belly of a Star Destroy, and Mara’s nearness was an unavoidable trigger. When he opened his eyes again, she had moved back a few steps and was watching him intently. 

“I’m in control,” Luke said, though the fact that he hadn’t sprung for her throat probably made the statement unnecessary. “There are only three pilots in the second ready room on the right. I’ll go in.” 

“Alright,” Mara said, she took another step back down the corridor. “If your plan doesn’t work—”

“You’ll know.” 

She jerked her head in acknowledgment and bent over the datapad again, as though she were engrossed in a report on the screen. Luke took a breath and turned the corner. 

On the other side of the ready room door, the off-duty pilots sat on a set of industrial couches that curved around the monitor table in the center of the room. Three heads turned as he walked into the room; two turned back to their datapads, but one of the pilots watched Luke cross the room and head for the lockers along one side. He could feel the pilot's eyes on his back. 

He tried to brush away the pilot’s attention without drawing too much of the Force, but it was a delicate technique, and he didn’t want to push too hard. The two pilots who were already engrossed in their datapads were easy; they’d already dismissed his presence and were happy to accept the subliminal suggestion that he wasn’t worth any more of their time. The third mind was already suspicious; far too alert for the subtle touch. Luke tried to turn his attention away with another gentle nudge. 

It wasn’t enough. 

He was just reaching for a flight suit when the pilots stood. “Hey, you. What are you doing?” 

Luke flashed the pilot what he hoped was a disarming smile. “Just picking up a couple of flight suits.” He gestured to the locker. 

“I don’t recognize you. What’s your number?” His accuser was standing now. 

Luke turned to face the pilots. They were all watching him now. None of them were wearing blasters, but that wouldn’t matter much if they decided to raise the alarm. There was no way he could divert their attention without calling on the Force to seize hold of three minds simultaneously. He didn’t want to kill these men—but he couldn’t draw on the Force now. 

He kept his face open, expression a little put out by the question, but not alarmed. Offered a friendly, what can you do shrug. “I just transferred over from the _Retribution_.” 

“Transfer? I never heard of any transfer—” 

“Sergeant,” Mara said from the door. Her voice was cold, commanding, Coruscanti-crisp; the voice of an Imperial officer. The pilots all straightened in response to her tone. 

“Commander Cotti and I just returned from a covert assignment on Honoghr; I don’t believe we were required to file a report with you?” 

“No—ma’am.” 

“I didn’t think so,” Mara said, looking at them as though they were no better than something she might find under her shoe. “As you were.” 

Luke unhooked three black flight suits and draped them over his arm. Mara swept one more scornful look over the three pilots before she turned on her heel and stalked through the open door. Luke followed. 

She kept the mask on as she strode down the hall at a brisk but unhurried clip, Luke trailing along behind her like an attentive subordinate. At the turbolifts she tapped impatiently at the call button, ignoring two crewers that still lingered in the hall near the lifts, and strode into the first empty lift that arrived. The two crewers glanced into the tubrolift as if considering whether catching that particular lift was worth it; at an imperious glare from Mara they turned away. 

As soon as the doors slid shut she bent over the control panel, keying in a command that locked the lift while in transit so that no one else could call it to a stop. When she turned to look at him, the Imperial officer was gone. The look on her face was the one Luke was beginning to think of as “Mara on a mission”—sharply focused, alert, with a pinched wariness around the edges. 

"So far, so good," he said, handing her the smallest of the TIE pilot suits. He tried for a reassuring smile but it came out half-hearted at best. 

"So far." She didn't return the smile. 

The trip to the prison level—a complicated route that took them up deep into the Star Destroyer, in the far aft section of the ship, right above the massive sublight drive engines—gave them both time to pull on the flight suits. The TIE flight suit was tight over his brown smuggler’s flight suit, but he would manage. The suit bunched at Mara’s wrists and ankles, and was bulky across her shoulders, the large collar hiding the pale line of her neck. 

He abandoned the tool belt and attached his lightsaber to the TIE suit’s belt, clipping the comm alongside it, leaving the line open. When they reached the floor below the prison level, Mara took a sharp right and headed for the nearest terminal where she could access the central computer. The access passageways to the trash compactor were only a few minutes away in the other direction. 

There was a maintenance closet across from the door to the trash compactor in the narrow, grated passageway that connected to the main corridor. Luke hung the flight suit he’d stolen for Karrde on a hook in the closet and pulled a maintenance coverall over his flight suit before he stepped over to the compactor door. 

Mara had been right—the smell was worse than he remembered. The stench hit him like a physical blow when the door to the garbage compactor opened. These particular garbage compactors didn’t process human waste—thank the Force—but the smell was pungent enough, with an acrid chemical sting that made his head swim. 

The only illumination came from the emergency lights above the door, washing the room in a familiar red glow. It was darker than he remembered, and smaller, though that might have been the difference between a Star Destroyer’s compactor and the massive scale of the Death Star. 

The dark stains that ran down the walls were familiar, though, along with the rank smell. Broken equipment was heaped in piles, small mountains of trash that sloped up the walls of the compactor. Between the hills of rubbish were sunken pits filled with stagnant water. He remembered the sinkholes vividly—though nothing moved in the water here except for a few scraps of plastic bobbing on the dark surface. 

Luke reached up and hooked a hand in the wide grooves that ran along the walls. His fingers slid a little in the oily slime that encrusted the walls. Hoisting himself up onto the tallest pile of scrap, he braced himself on the rubble. 

“Ready,” he told Mara. 

With a deep grinding sound that rumbled through the walls, the sides of the compactor began to move toward him. 

Just like on the Death Star. 

_The water washed over his head, blinding him, choking him as the long arms of dianoga dragged him down. He tried to scream—_

A large piece of plastic snapped with a loud popping noise a few feet away, and Luke was jerked out of his memory, jumping at the noise and nearly losing his grip on the groove in the wall. 

The compactor stopped. 

“Skywalker?” Mara’s voice through the comm, curious but steady. It was something to latch onto in the murky red-soaked gloom. “You alright? Your breath went funny through the comms.” 

“Yeah. I’m okay. Just—bad memories of the last time I was in one of these things.” 

“I can’t imagine why,” Mara said dryly. 

Luke huffed a laugh. “There was a dianoga in the Death Star compactor.”

There was a moment of silence over the line and then Mara said, “you’re kidding me.” 

“Nope.” Luke shook his head ruefully even though she couldn’t see it. “It pulled me under. I thought I was going to die.” 

“Why does your life always sound like a cheap holodrama, Skywalker?” 

“Just lucky, I guess.” He wished he could see the expression on her face. “You can start the compactor again.” 

He braced himself as the walls began to move again, rumbling toward the center of the room. 

A large chunk of durasteel grating slipped under his foot, catching at the toe of his boot and nearly dragging him off his feet. He kicked free and found purchase on a large steel chest half-buried in the junk pile. It held under his weight as the junk metal ground together. 

Mara began to speak through the comm. “A couple of months ago a juvenile mynock wedged itself into a duct on the Wild Karrde and chewed through a couple of lines. Chewed right through a waste line. It took two days to clear up the mess. The less glamorous side of smuggling,” she drawled. 

“I’ve heard of it,” Luke said. 

He liked the sound of her voice, he realized, even distorted through the comm line. It was something to hold onto; an anchor. His heart rate jumped again as the chest he was standing on turned over, propelled by the detritus churning under it. The chest gave another lurch as it hit a large slab of metal, and Luke’s feet slid out from under him. Only a panicked grab at a long metal spike sticking out of the junk pile kept him from tumbling down the heap. Even still, he landed on top of the debris, grunting as something sharp dug into his side. The corner of the chest that had thrown him off. 

The walls stopped abruptly. 

“I’m okay,” he called. “This is harder than it looks.” At least this time he wasn’t pinched between two banks of scrap, trapped in the compressing rubble. He used the spike to pull himself to his feet again, and found a sturdier pile of rubbish to stand on. “Start the compactor.” 

The garbage rose higher until the walls were close enough that he could scale them comfortably. He called for a stop and the compactor ground to a halt. Overhead, he could see the square hole in the ceiling where the chute from the prison levels emptied into the pit below. Grasping for the Force, he used it to vault upward. At the top of his leap, he kicked his legs out and threw his shoulders back, wedging himself in the narrow gap between the walls. 

Chimney climbing. Not quite like climbing he’d done on Tatooine. It was wetter and filthier, for a start. He hadn’t forgotten the knack of it, and after a few tentative steps, he was scooting along confidently up the walls toward the chute. When he reached the top of the compactor, he hauled himself up into the chute and climbed until he reached a prison grate. 

Using the tip of his lightsaber, he cut out a hole in the grate, carefully beveling the edges so that the grate would lay back in place after he’d climbed through. As he lifted himself into the cellblock corridor, a stinging, antiseptic smell hit his nose, a striking odor after the pungent stink of the garbage pit. It was the same smell that hung in every Imperial cellblock: the reek of solvents used to clean away the evidence of torture. 

“Cell 148,” Mara said softly through the comm. Once he’d located the cell, she opened the door remotely. 

Karrde was sitting on one of the benches that ran along the walls of the cell. He looked up as the door opened, his lips curling into an ironic half-smile. His sardonic expression faltered as he registered he stained coveralls, and was replaced by a look of blank shock as he reached Luke’s face. 

“I don’t believe it,” Karrde said. 

“Are you fit to travel?” Luke asked. 

“Fit and ready.” Karrde stood, a little stiffly, and crossed the cell in a few strides. Luke had been right—Thrawn hadn’t inflicted a full interrogation session on the smuggler yet. Karrde looked a little grey and haggard, the result of sleep deprivation and prison rations, but Luke didn’t see any evidence of physical torture. His clothes were rumpled and unwashed, the neck of his shirt torn, and he hadn’t shaved in days, but despite his disheveled appearance, he looked alert and strong enough for the route they would have to travel. 

“Come on. We’re between guard shifts but we have to move quickly. We have a plan to get you out without anyone noticing.” 

“We?” Karrde asked. 

“Me and Mara.” The door to Karrde’s prison slid shut behind him, and Luke heard the locking mechanism activate again—Mara’s doing. 

“Mara’s here?” Karrde asked, his tone sharp. “Of her own volition?” 

“I’m here,” Mara said over the comms. 

“Mara recruited me to rescue you,” Luke said. “Just me.” 

He could see Karrde processing what he’d just been told; dozens of questions on his tongue, questions he didn’t voice. 

“I owed her—for Myrkr,” Luke said as he led Karrde down the corridor. 

Karrde didn’t argue or question Luke’s pronouncement. He was quiet for a moment, before he said, “If we get out of this, I’ll owe you a debt as well, and I pay my debts.” 

“That’s not necessary—” 

Karrde raised a hand. “The Empire captured me because I have something that they want. I would prefer to give it to the New Republic instead.” 

They’d reached the grate and Luke bent down to lift up the detached piece. The smell of sewage wafted up into the corridor. 

“You must be joking, of course,” Karrde said. 

“Afraid not.” Luke climbed into the hole and braced himself against the walls of the shaft. “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

“It’s the falling from them that worries me.” Karrde had gone even paler, color leaching out of his light brown skin, but he gripped the edge of the grating and carefully lowered himself into the chute. He fitted the loose piece of grating back into place. Luke hoped it would disguise their means of escape, if no one searched the corridor too closely. 

He guided Karrde down the chute and showed him how to scale down the walls. “Slow and easy,” he said, and so they went, gingerly working their way down the grimy garbage compactor walls. 

“Mara has access codes for the ship’s computer,” Luke said as he helped Karrde find his footing in the treacherously shifting trash. “She’s controlling the compactor.” 

“Ah,” Karrde said. He shifted his weight, testing the solidity of the scrap under his feet. 

“Are you ready?” Mara’s voice drifted through Luke’s comm. 

At their assent, the walls began to retract, the rubble tumbling away as the room expanded around them. It was easier to keep his footing with a second person to catch him whenever he lost his balance, and going down took a lot less time than going up, to his relief. Mara was quiet over the comms. When the compactor halted and he and Karrde climbed across the garbage pit to the door, she unlocked the mechanism without a word. 

A pair of maintenance techs looked up from an open panel they had been working on halfway down the main corridor, staring at Luke and Karrde as they emerged from the trash compactor. 

“—I was up all night with those figures and now you tell me that relay's out of alignment?” Karrde said sharply, as though he were an overworked manager taking a subordinate to task. 

“Sorry, sir,” Luke muttered, ducking his head like a sub-engineer who resented his boss’s attention to detail. 

The maintenance techs had all heard this one before; they turned back to their work without looking at Luke and Karrde twice. 

Mara was waiting for them by the turbolifts. Something in her expression tightened when she saw Karrde; it was almost a flinch, as though she expected a blow. 

“Mara wasn’t in on the trap,” Luke began, but Karrde cut him off. 

“I know she wasn’t. If for no other reason than that my interrogators worked so hard to drop hints to the contrary.” 

“I can explain—” Mara started. 

“Later,” Karrde said. Something unspoken passed between them as she handed him the third TIE flight suit Luke had stolen. “There will be time for that later.” 

* * *

The turbolift had barely cleared the stern of the Star Destroyer when the shipwide alarm went off. Luke glanced at Mara and Karrde. Karrde had put out a hand to brace himself against the wall of the lift when it had jerked to a stop and now he was craning his head around the pair of gunners who had come aboard shortly after they’d caught the lift on the maintenance level. The gunners were standing in front of the control board, blocking Luke’s view of the lift’s controls. Mara was watching the gunners. 

The gunners themselves simply looked put out by the delay. “Don’t they ever get tired of running drills up there on the bridge?” the first gunner said as he dug around in his belt for an ID card. 

“Talk like that might get you a face-to-face with a stormtrooper squad,” the other said. The alarm wailed on, showing no sign of letting up. 

“It was a lot worse before the Grand Admiral took over. Anyway, what do you want ’em to do—”

Mara moved fast as a desert shrike. The first gunner went down like a stone, her hand striking the side of his neck with a sickening snap. The second gunner barely had time for a half-strangled yelp before she grabbed the back of his head and slammed it forward into the doorframe. Once, twice, and he slumped onto the floor in a heap. The first gunner was dead; life still flickered weakly in the second. 

Mara was already at the controls, jabbing furiously and ineffectively at the panel. “They’ve locked the turbolifts. We’ll need to cut our way out. Skywalker?” She gestured at the door. 

Luke pulled his lightsaber out of the thigh pocket on his flight suit and went to work. He cut smoothly through the durasteel of the turbolift doors, the occasional shower of sparks raining out as the humming blade severed an electrical line. The slab of steel fell into the shaft below and disappeared. The turbolift was locked in a half-turn, a narrow gap just wide enough to squeeze through showing between the edge of the door and a crossway tunnel. Mara led the way. 

The journey through the turbolift tunnels was a blur of red and blue emergency lights, the lift’s powerlines humming by their heads. Through an access tunnel that branched off of the main line, they found a service droid storage room. Rows of deactivated maintenance droids lined the tunnel on either side like a silent honor guard. Their long spider-like limbs, made for repairing equipment and hauling cargo, was not unlike an array of alien weaponry, rendered immobile. 

Mara headed straight for the computer terminal in the small room at the end of the storage area. As he followed her into the room, Luke felt shock rippling out from her and he hurried to her side. The computer terminal was as lifeless as the droids they'd just passed. 

“They’ve shut down the main computer,” she said. Her fingers moved restlessly over the terminal’s controls, as if she might reactivate it through sheer persistence. “Not just bypassed or put it on standby. Shut it down.” 

“The Grand Admiral must have figured out you can get into it,” Karrde said. He leaned over the terminal as well, his hand braced on the frame. “We’ll need to find a new way out, then. Do you have any idea where we are?” 

“Somewhere above the aft hangar bays,” Mara said. “The gunners got on the lift just forward of the central crew section, and we hadn’t gone very far down yet. We could try for one of the assault shuttles in the forward bays.” 

“Above the hangar bays,” Karrde repeated as though he were working something out. He tapped a finger on the edge of the terminal. “Near the vehicle deep storage area?” 

“Yes.” Mara eyed him. “Are you suggesting we grab a ship from up there?” 

“They won’t be expecting us to access the hanger bay via deep storage.” 

Luke recognized the look of disbelief on Mara’s face from the days he'd spent arguing in favor of rescuing Karrde via the garbage chute. “And what if Thrawn catches on?” she asked. “Trying to shoot our way out of deep storage—”

Luke could feel the sharp tingle of an alarm at the back of his head. “Hold on. Someone’s coming.” 

He stepped away from the terminal and pressed himself against the wall next to the door. Mara dropped behind the bulk of the computer terminal; Karrde melted back into the droid storage tunnel. There was a long tense moment. 

With only the briefest surge in the Force as warning, the door slid open and a pair of stormtroopers marched into the room, two naval troopers in crisp black uniforms close on their heels. 

The bright blue-white lights in the droid storage tunnel came on abruptly, flooding the tunnel with light. There was the whirring sound of maintenance droids powering on all down the tunnel where Karrde had disappeared. 

The stormtroopers spun toward the entrance to the tunnel, blasters raised, at the same time that one of the naval troopers spotted Mara, crouched behind the terminal. A bolt from Mara’s blaster cut off his warning shot, and he fell, the front of his uniform smoking. The other trooper dived for cover, right into the blade of Luke’s lightsaber. He blocked two shots from one of the stormtroopers before Mara shot the trooper from behind. The last one was already lying in the entrance to the tunnel, caught by another of Mara’s precisely aimed bolts.

It was all over by the time Karrde appeared in the entrance to the tunnel, stepping cooly over the body. 

“A good team,” he said. “The next time I need rescue from a Star Destroyer I won’t ask for anyone else.” 

“Deep storage?” Mara asked, rising from behind the computer terminal. 

He nodded. “The turbolifts are still offline, so the tunnels should be safe.” 

“You’d better be right about this.”

“My apologies in advance if I’m not. Let’s go.”

* * *

Half a dozen unmarked Intelligence ships sat beside a wide square hole in the floor of the deep storage hanger. The hole was the top of the heavy vehicle lift, the lift currently in use elsewhere. Only half the lights in the hanger had been left on, and deep shadows gathered in the gaps between the ships. With the exception of a few maintenance droids trundling by on their rounds, the storage area was abandoned. 

“—I think the L19 would be a better choice,” Karrde was saying to Mara, couched beside Luke as they surveyed the storage area floor through a hole he’d cut in a cable duct. 

“The light freighter’s faster,” Mara argued. “It might give us an edge—” 

Luke had his eyes on the storage area floor. Even with the central computer out of action, they could hear the heavy rumble of machinery as the lift, still operational, began to rise up from the level below. There was a ship on the lift, being moved into deep storage from the main hangar. As soon as Luke made out its familiar shape in the half-light of the hanger, he knew that they wouldn’t be leaving on any other ship. 

“We’re taking that one,” he said, nodding toward the lift. 

It was the _Millennium Falcon._


	7. Chapter 7

Luke almost hadn’t believed it when they found the _Millenium Falcon_ sitting in the _Chimaera’s_ deep storage hold. It was like she had been waiting for them, and as soon as he saw her he knew that they wouldn’t be escaping the _Chimaera_ in any other ship, even if both Mara and Karrde argued the point. 

The _Falcon_ was home. She didn’t belong in Imperial hands, and he couldn’t have thought of a better ship to escape an Imperial stronghold—any Imperial stronghold—than the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy. 

It felt like a sign that the Force was still with him, in spite of everything. 

Their mission to extract Karrde had worked better than he’d expected. Things had gone according to plan up until Thrawn had—somehow—caught on. Only a few TIE fighters had managed to scramble by the time they’d flown the _Falcon_ out of deep storage and through the main hangar of the _Chimaera,_ and they were able to jump to hyperspace after a very brief dogfight that Luke spent manning the _Falcon’s_ gun turret. 

Once they’d jumped to lightspeed Mara led Karrde off to get cleaned up, while Luke stayed in the cockpit to check the _Falcon’s_ navigation logs. As far as he could tell—and he was never entirely sure the nav logs were working properly—the last trip the ship had taken was to Endor, though that destination didn’t make any sense to him. There was no indication that any struggle had taken place on the ship, and he didn’t sense anything amiss from Leia, so he had to conclude that Han had left the ship somewhere in the course of some scheme, and Thrawn had happened upon it or stolen it. 

He checked the logs twice, checked whatever rudimentary scanning system Han and Chewie had installed to search for any Imperial modifications or homing beacons, and came up with nothing. No clues as to how Thrawn had stolen the _Falcon,_ and no indication that the Imperials had tampered with the ship. 

He found Mara in the engine room. 

“Mara?” he called as he approached. Her hand darted to her blaster as she turned, though she didn’t draw it. Raising his hands, he took a step back. “I’m okay. It’s me. I’m under control.” 

She nodded and jerked her head at the engine. “Checking to make sure they didn’t leave us any surprises.” 

“I didn’t find anything in the ship’s computer. Frankly, I’m not sure _I_ could even tell the difference between Imperial tampering and Han or Chewie’s _‘improvements.’”_

That earned him a smirk. “Thrawn found it abandoned, orbiting Endor,” Mara said. “He mentioned it when I met him. He thought that Organa-Solo might have left it there.” 

“Huh. I wonder…” He shook that line of speculation away for now. “Well, we’ve got it back now. I can ask Leia when I see her again.” 

“Skywalker.” 

He turned back to look at her; her face was shadowed by an exhaust tube curling over her head and she didn’t quite meet his eye. Her hair was starting to slip out of the knot at the back of her head. The air in the engine room seemed to thicken as her silence stretched out. 

“Mara?” 

She looked away. “I’m going to do another sweep. You should get cleaned up. You still smell like a waste compactor.” 

She brushed by him and was gone. 

* * *

After a sonic shower and a change of clothes, Luke found Karrde seated at the dejarik table in the lounge, a steaming cup of caf and a pile of ration bars on the table in front of him. He was wearing one of Han’s shirts, the top of the prison jumpsuit gathered at his waist. He gestured at the bars. 

“The first full meal I’ve had in days.” His hand shook a little as he reached for the cup. Luke tried not to stare, but Karrde caught his gaze. “I’ve had very little sleep or food the last six days. Part of the softening up process. Mara tells me I’ll be fine in another day.” The side of his mouth twitched. “Her bedside manner leaves something to be desired.” 

“I’m sure we have more to eat than ration bars,” Luke said. 

In the _Falcon’s_ tiny galley he found a full stock of frozen meals in the conservator. From Sullust, from the looks of the packaging. Luke couldn’t remember the last time Han had been on Sullust, but the meal packs hadn’t expired, and they looked more expensive than the meal packs he remembered eating on the _Falcon_ during the Rebellion. It couldn’t compare to a fresh meal, but it was better than ration bars. He warmed two up, setting aside another in case Mara joined them. 

“Thank you,” Karrde said as he opened the meal pack. 

Luke dug into his own meal pack, watching Karrde out of the corner of his eye as the other man began to eat, slowly spooning the grain-and-some-sort-of-sauce portion into his mouth. 

He probably didn’t look much better than Karrde did. After the nightmare had triggered his relapse, he didn't dare allow himself to completely lose consciousness again, or sink into the Force. But light meditation wasn’t an adequate substitute for a good night’s rest, nor a long-term solution. 

“I wanted to thank you for the rescue,” Karrde said, putting down his spoon. “After Myrkr you were the last person in the galaxy I expected to walk into that cell.” 

“I owed it to Mara,” Luke said. “She was the one who took the risk, asking me to get involved.” 

“A great risk,” Karrde said softly, rubbing a finger across his bottom lip. “I can’t say that I would have made that call.” 

He picked up his cup of caf and took a sip, letting a few moments slide by until he spoke again. “I would have stood by my decision to let Mara shoot you in the hold on Mykr,” he said. “But in retrospect, I’m glad that she didn’t pull the trigger. It was a mistake that would have cost me my life.” 

“Mara would have found someone else to rescue you.” 

“Maybe.” Karrde sounded unconvinced. “Or maybe she would have gone alone.” 

There was an uneasy silence as they both contemplated what might have happened if Mara had gone alone. Luke didn’t doubt her skill, or her determination, but it had been a close enough call, even with the three of them working together. There was no doubt in his mind that Mara would have gone anyway. 

“Seven months,” Karrde murmured, his gaze distant. “Mara has been in my employ for seven months. That’s all. I promoted her to my second shortly before Thrawn came to Myrkr. She could have—perhaps should have—written me off and taken control of my organization. That’s what I wanted her to do. That’s what I did once.” 

There was a story there; knowing what he did about Fringe crime syndicates, Luke could guess at an outline, but he doubted that Karrde would ever offer the details. 

“Have you attacked her again?” Karrde asked. 

His head jerked up, the direct question taking him my surprise, guilt trickling in. “Not like on Myrkr. I have more control now.” 

“Not like on Myrkr,” Karrde repeated, drawing out the sentence. 

“She shot me with a stun bolt the first time.” 

Karrde’s lip twitched. “Good for her. And the second time?” 

The second time he’d come close to slipping on Jomark he had been able to regain control quickly and Mara had stunned C’baoth before the Jedi Master tampered with shields again. The third time— 

“I locked myself in a bunk room. I never got close enough to touch her.” 

“It’s going to happen again.” 

Luke nodded, letting his head drop. He was doing fine, keeping it under control—until he wasn’t. So far he’d been prevented from hurting her—any worse than he had on Myrkr—but they’d been lucky. He just had to catch her unawares once, and it would be over. 

“Are you any closer to a cure?” 

“I don’t know.” He squeezed his eyes shut against the sting of tears. 

“Have you figured out the cause?” 

“Yes.” He blew out a breath and opened his eyes again. C’baoth had been manipulative, but he _had_ led Luke to the truth about the command. “The Emperor used the Force to put the compulsion in my head during the battle on Endor.” Although the fact that Palpatine had been a Sith Lord had spread across the galaxy after his death, Luke wasn’t sure that most people understood what that actually _meant._ “Like a—sleeper agent.” 

Karre considered this information without questioning _how_ the Emperor had managed to implant the command. Luke was grateful for his tact; he wasn’t sure how to explain the process anyway. 

“Why would the Emperor want to kill Mara?” 

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure that out.” 

“Is it because she’s Force-sensitive?” When Luke hesitated to respond, Karrde continued, “yes, I know. She doesn’t hide her abilities as well as she thinks.” 

“That may be part of it but I don’t think it’s just that.” 

“Ah,” Karrde said. “She never told me about her connection with the Empire, though it was obvious after they took me prisoner. I’m unclear under what terms she deserted the Empire or what she told them on her return.” 

“She was loyal until the Emperor died. I don’t—” He wasn’t sure how much Karrde knew, or what Mara wanted Karrde to know, and what he knew of her past was patchy, anyway. “She doesn’t have any love for Thrawn or the Imperials now.” 

“Yes, she did make that clear,” Karrde said wryly. “I’ll ask her myself, of course. When she’s in the mood to share.” He gathered up his empty bowl and silverware. “I want all the details on how you broke me out—but that can wait. It’s a long trip to Coruscant.” 

* * *

The _Falcon_ was larger than the Skipray, but it was still a small ship. Luke gave Han and Leia’s cabin to Karrde for the duration of the trip, and the older man retired for the night. Luke wished he could sink into a long, dreamless sleep himself, but he didn’t dare. The command was a distant hum at the back of his head, held at bay. As he cleaned up the small kitchen, he checked his shields compulsively, running his mind through the process that C’baoth had taught him, over and over until the counter of the _Falcon’s_ kitchenette gleamed. 

When he’d exhausted the number of things that needed polishing in the kitchen, he went looking for Mara. 

He didn’t need to search—he knew where she was, _exactly_ where she was. His mind locked on to her signature in the Force with the precision of a targeted missile. She’d been avoiding him even before they’d boarded the _Falcon._ Despite agreeing to talk with him the night he’d locked himself in his cabin, they hadn’t done much more than argue over the rescue plan until they reached the _Chimaera._

He found her in the cockpit, slumped in the captain’s chair, one boot propped against the flight console. She’d changed out of the black TIE fighter jumpsuit she’d worn in the Chimaera into a pair of Leia’s dark blue pants and low cut boots, with a long light blue tunic that was probably Winter’s—it was her style and size. She was flipping the talisman the Yoma had given her over in her fingers as she gazed absently up at the viewport, the silver lines of hyperspace blurring by as they raced towards Coruscant. 

She let the talisman fall from her fingers and sat up a little as he handed her a mug. “What is this?” 

“Hot chocolate.” 

Her expression was dubious as she took a sip. He settled into Chewie’s chair, taking a sip out of his own mug. 

“You kept Yoma’s talisman.” It hung from a thin leather cord around her neck. 

“She insisted I wear it.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t mean anything.” 

“Maybe it does.” 

She shot him a skeptical look. 

“It means that a stranger cared enough about you to try and protect you in the only way she knew how.” 

“The blaster pack was more helpful.” 

He chuckled. Taking a sip of his hot chocolate, he joined her in staring out at the hyperspace swirling around them. His head was quiet—as quiet as it ever was these days. 

“Where did you go after the Emperor died?” 

She shifted her shoulders—not quite a shrug—her gaze still fixed on the viewport. “Nowhere. Isard sent her thugs to arrest me right after the news of his death reached Coruscant.” Her lip curled in disgust. “She must have had plans in place for the moment he died. Sweeping up any loose ends that would be a threat to her. That’s when—that’s when I knew I could never go back. There wasn’t a place for me in the Empire anymore.” 

He couldn’t express regret for that, even if he felt sympathy for the pain that seeped out of that memory and clouded her face. 

“So,” she continued, “nowhere. I escaped Coruscant on a refugee ship. I worked for a bartender first—a grubby business, but he was kind to me. It didn’t last very long.” 

Falling quiet for a few moments, she kept her gaze fixed on the blur of hyperspace, a finger rubbing along the edge of her mug. “I think about that cantina all the time. I never expected people like that to be kind to me.” She shook her head, brow furrowing. “What I mean is—the galaxy wasn’t like I expected. It wasn’t at all like he told me it would be.” 

“I wasn’t what I expected either when I left Tatooine.” 

“You’ve never worked for tips in a port cantina on the outer rim,” she scoffed. 

“No,” he said, grimacing. He didn’t envy anyone who worked a port cantina. “But I didn’t really know much about the Galaxy when I left Tatooine. I had a lot to learn.” 

“You were the poster boy for her Rebellion,” she said bitterly. “I had nothing. Nothing. I lost everything I knew. I had privilege, I had power…” 

She started out heated, her hand clenching around the talisman, and then she stopped abruptly, the fire going out of her, replaced by a bitter weariness. “I lost it all. I thought—I _hoped_ that I could make something for myself in Karrde’s organization. That didn’t last either. No one in his organization trusts me anymore.” 

“That was my fault, wasn’t it?” 

“How do you figure that?” she said, her voice sharp. “Thrawn caught Karrde because I got sloppy.” 

“I—I guess I meant—I mean it’s my fault—my fault that you were put in that position. All of this is my fault.” 

Her eyes narrowed, eyes tilted. “Is this a Jedi thing or a hero thing? Deciding you’re responsible for every disaster?” 

He felt heat rush to his face. “That’s not true—I _am_ responsible, in sense, for the Emperor’s death, and I was the reason you were driven out of Myrkr—” 

“Listen,” she said, cutting him off. “The galaxy doesn’t revolve around you, Skywalker—”

He leaned across and kissed her. Her mouth opened against his in surprise as he brushed his lips across hers, before he pulled away. 

“Sorry. I’m—sorry.” He forced a laugh. “That’s not the stupidest idea I’ve ever had—Leia can tell you, I’ve done a lot of dumb things—but it’s probably up there. Sorry.” 

Mara shifted away from him, rising to her feet. He craned his head up to catch her expression, disappointment and regret curdling in his stomach. 

“Not the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” she said, as she stripped off her shirt and climbed into his lap. 

His mouth dropped open and she caught his lower lip between hers in a kiss, pressing her mouth insistently into his until, after the initial moment of shock, he responded, lips moving against hers. A fractured gasp cracked out of him, hands going to her hips. He’d wanted this since Myrkr, but he hadn’t dared to even think of it—as if admitting his desire, even to himself, would ensure that it would never happen. 

Or it would trigger the command to kill her. 

“Wha—” he broke off, pulling his head back so that he could look her in the eye. “What are you doing?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What does it look like, Skywalker?” 

“We can’t. I _can’t_. It’s too dangerous. What if I—” 

She laughed, a short breathy sound. “Did you think that wasn’t part of the draw?” 

“Mara. I’m not going to play around with your _life_.” 

She made a huffing sound and sat back, resting on his thighs. “That’s not—that’s not the only reason.” Her eyes unfocused, as though she were staring past him. “The cold… I can feel it around you. Hovering. Like a sidnak vulture.” 

“The dark side.” He could feel it too, drawn to his self-pity, feeding on his anger and despair. “Is it...calling to you?” 

She shook her head. “No. I can’t hear his voice either.” He felt the tentative brush of her mind against his, and without thinking, he reached back—

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

She flinched at the same time as he did, the connection between them snapping as they both slammed up shields. “Kriff,” he heard her mutter, her voice wavering. “That kriffing bastard.”

He braced himself for her to pull away, but only Mara squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, deep green in the dim light of the cockpit, she leaned in and kissed him again. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

He knew she could hear the voice echoing through his head and into hers, but she just pressed closer, her lips brushing his ear. “Luke. Let’s fuck his voice out of your head.” 

His hand tangled in her hair as he caught the back of her head and pulled her lips toward his again, their mouths meeting in a rough, hungry kiss. He heard the clatter of a final hairpin hitting the console behind her and her hair was loose in his fingers, unspooling out of the twist at the back of her head. 

Mara’s hands were under his shirt, the scratch of her blunt nails sending sparks up and down his sides. He let his own hands drop down to her waist, bare skin warm under his hands, and when she leaned into his touch he dared to trace her breast through the thin fabric of the simple bra she wore. Mara made a soft sound of approval and pushed into his hands, even as she broke away from his mouth. Her cheeks were pink, her slack mouth dark and bruised-looking. As he drank her in, her eyes latched onto his, a challenge in their sharp focus. He felt tension coiling low, stiffening his cock. 

This was moving much faster than he expected. 

Luke let go of her with a gasp. “Wait. I need.” 

She stilled, her eyes on his face. He let his head loll back against the seat as he fought to catch his breath. “It’s—overwhelming. It’s been a while.” 

“That’s the _point,”_ she said. 

His face pulled into a frown. “Mara—” His objection was cut off when she shifted her hips against his, the corners of her mouth curving into a smug smile as it drew a groan out of him. 

He caught hold of her hips as she tried to move again, an impatient snarl falling from her mouth as he held her still. He tightened his grip, digging his fingers into the bare skin above the edge of her pants as she fought his hold. Conceding for a moment, she stopped struggling, her tongue darting out to lick her lips. His eyes locked on her mouth, his cock twitching. Sensing her frustration melt away abruptly, he prodded the edges of her presence warily. 

She was _pleased._

A feral grin sliding onto her face, she leaned harder into his hands, testing his strength, pushing into his fingers. 

“This is not—a game,” he gasped. “The command—I don’t want to hurt you.” 

She stopped fighting his hold. “I could tie you to the bed.” 

His stomach clenched at her words. If he wasn’t already flushed, he was definitely red as a Corellian sunset now. Something sly and satisfied worked its way across Mara’s face. “That’s a yes, then.” 

“Mara—” he said, helplessly. She swung out of his lap with a lithe grace. “Mara?” 

“If I’m going to cuff you to a bed, we need a bed,” she said, standing in the aisle, the blue light dancing over the bare skin of her torso. 

As he rose stiffly out of the co-pilot’s chair another thought occurred to him. “Wait—what if Karrde hears us?” 

“He won’t.” Loose wisps of hair danced around her face as she shook her head. “I gave him some sleeping pills I found in the ship’s medkit.” 

“Did he take them?” They were probably Leia’s, and if so, they were strong. 

_“Yes.”_ She blew out an exasperated breath. “Even if he does hear us, it’s none of Karrde’s business who I fuck, and I want to fuck _you,_ Skywalker. What’s so hard to understand about that?” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you done making up excuses?” 

He caught hold of her and kissed her again, hard. It turned out that he was, in fact, done with fighting his doubts. 

The small bunk room where he usually slept whenever he traveled on the _Falcon_ was just down the curve of the hall. He still had spare clothes and necessities in the storage space underneath the bunk he’d thought of as “his” bunk since Yavin. The room was small and a bit shabby, like nearly everything on the _Falcon._ He’d tossed the TIE flight suit from the _Chimaera_ on the opposite berth when he’d changed into his own clothes and it still lay there, crumpled. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d brought someone back to this room, though it had been a while, back when he’d still been flying for the Rebellion. He hadn’t had a reckless encounter like this—frantic intimacy with someone whose future was as uncertain as his—in years. The dalliances he’d had since Endor were few and far between; he’d been preoccupied by various campaigns and missions for the New Republic, and with his Jedi studies on top of that, it didn’t leave him much time for romance—or anything else. 

Mara hadn’t moved from the doorway. “Binders?” she asked, an eyebrow raised. His mouth went dry. 

“Yea—yeah.” Most ships didn’t carry a spare pair of binders at all, but the _Falcon_ had never been an ordinary freighter. They were right where he’d last seen them, stuffed in a cabinet down the hall beside a set of rebreathers. He thanked the Force that Han or Chewie hadn’t moved them somewhere else. 

When he returned to the bunk room, Mara had removed her boots and was sliding out of her trousers. He froze for a moment, just watching her as she bent and gathered up the garment, folding it and tossing it on the other bed alongside the flight suit. Yoma’s talisman tapped against her chest as she moved, right between her breasts, and she removed it as well, coiling the leather cord between her fingers and placing it on the pillow. 

She held out her hand and he gave her the binders wordlessly, mouth too dry for speech. Turning them in her hands, she checked the keychip in the lock before tucking it on a shelf above the opposite bunk—out of reach of anyone lying in his berth. 

Raising an eyebrow, she looked him up and down. “You should take off your clothes first. Before I use these.” 

His hands flew to the clasps that ran along the side of his shirt, fumbling with the fasteners as though his fingers didn’t quite remember how they worked. He yanked the last two loose and shucked the shirt over his head, not bothering to look where he tossed it. His belt followed. Mara had already confiscated and hidden his lightsaber soon after they boarded the _Falcon,_ which was one less step to worry about. He tripped over his boots a little as he tried to remove them and his pants simultaneously. Feeling slightly foolish, he pushed aside the heap of clothes with his foot and straightened. Looking up, he met her eyes and his insecurity instantly melted away, as Mara’s appreciative gaze made him feel as though he’d been dunked in hot water. 

“Come here,” she said, raising the binders. Her voice had gone low and rich. He wanted to hear it again. 

Luke stepped forward, lifting his hands. The metal was cold against his skin as Mara snapped the binders in place; the weight around his wrists grounding him as something eased between his shoulder blades and his head felt suddenly light. 

Mara lifted her chin. “On the bed.” 

The order cut through him like an energy pulse, leaving him feeling as though his limbs had turned to liquid. He staggered over to the bed and stretched out on it, splaying himself out under her sharp eye. The binders fell against his chest like an anchor. 

After another moment’s consideration, Mara leaned over him, looping a finger into the gap where the binders met at his wrists and stretching his arms up over his head. It took him half a beat to realize that she was going to activate the built-in magnetic charge, and then the binders clamped onto the head of the bunk with a quiet _clank._ She wrapped a hand around his forearm and tugged to make sure the binders would hold. The action sent another jolt through him, and he squirmed slightly on the bed, his hips shifting restlessly. 

Taking a deep breath, he tried to calm his racing heart. She was only checking to make sure the binders were secure. That’s all. 

He wanted her to touch him again. Immediately. 

Instead, she caught his eye as she slowly unhooked the side clasp on her bra and peeled it away. His gaze skittered down to her breasts, as her nipples tightened in the cool ship air, and then up again to her face, to the pleased smirk there. Moving slowly, she stripped off her underwear and knelt on the edge of the bed, considering him. 

He flushed again under her frank scrutiny. “Mara…” 

“Shhh.” 

The very tips of her fingers brushed his chest, the touch so light it was like a whisper. He inhaled sharply as her hand began to wander, drifting up to trace the line of his collarbone and then down to brush over a nipple. As she idly drew patterns across the skin of his stomach, his hands jerked, wrists digging into the binders. 

“I want to touch you,” he moaned. 

_“Do_ you?” There was a warm amusement under her arch tone.

 _“Yes.”_ He wanted to beg for it, even while knowing she couldn’t risk freeing his hands for even a moment. 

“Hmm.” 

After a moment’s consideration, she rose up on her knees and shuffled up the bed until she could throw a leg over his chest. She was hunched awkwardly in the space above him, a hand braced on the metal wall near his bound hands. Luke blinked, watching her speechlessly as she shifted her knees forward and rocked her hips above him until she straddled his face. The sound that came out of him was a garbled groan of surprise and approval, and Mara chuckled. 

“Go on,” she purred. 

He dove in like a man parched. Her breath hitched as he began to lap at her folds, her body quaking above him. As he lost himself in her, he listened for the sigh, the shiver, the choked-off cries to map what she liked and what she wanted from his mouth. When he managed to wring a short wail out of her, his cock throbbed in response. 

The hand that wasn’t braced against the wall tangled in his, where it was pinned above his head, her fingers squeezing tight as he sucked greedily at her clit. He relished every sound he pulled out of her, until a strangled cry bounced off the sharp edges of the bunk as she came against his tongue. 

To his disappointment, Mara pulled away from him almost immediately. She climbed backward on unsteady limbs, panting as she rolled onto her side next to him. He craned his head to watch her, his body buzzing from the smell and feel of her against his lips. 

With a small hum of contentment, she pushed herself up on one arm to kiss him, slower and softer than he expected. When she pulled away it was to wipe his face with the edge of the sheet half-trapped under him. 

“Luke,” she said. “Do you want to come?” 

She said his given name so rarely that the sound of the syllables on her lips caught him by surprise and it took him a moment to respond. 

“Yes, yes I—” He broke off with a grunt as her hand wrapped around his cock. Whatever he’d meant to say scattered out of his head as she stroked confidently, the words lost in the pull of her hand over his shaft. 

Her eyes were fixed on his face as she touched him, flicking from his eyes to his mouth as a jumble of incoherent obscenities fell from his lips. Without warning, she pushed herself up again and swung a leg over his hips, and before he had a moment to process the fact that her hand wasn’t wrapped around his cock anymore, she was sinking down onto him. 

His hips thrust up into hers with a shout. She was tight and slick and heat all around him. Luke moaned and strained against the binders as she began to move, raising and lowering herself in a slow, gliding motion. 

He wanted desperately—so desperately it almost felt like a physical ache—to reach out for Mara in the Force. He’d never been intimate with a trained Force-sensitive before; never had the opportunity to touch minds while sharing his body with another being. But he still sensed that it would be too much of a risk, as if by drawing on the Force would attract the attention of the compulsion, which lay quiet at the back of his mind. Mara had been right—as soon as they’d left the cockpit he hadn’t thought about the command once. 

As if in response to that line of thought, the words came snaking up through his brain: YOU WILL KILL—Mara’s hand cracked across his cheek. Luke’s entire body shuddered, his hips heaving up with a fresh jolt of arousal that left him gasping, blinking up at her in a daze. 

“Still with me?” she asked. 

“Uh-huh.” 

“Good,” she said, and the warmth of her approval soaked into him, washing away the fear and dread the command always sent coursing through him. 

He gave in to the sensation of her riding him. Everything diminished except the feel of her on top of him, around him, need and pleasure surging through his veins like an electric charge. Mara leaned forward, bracing her hands on the wall over his head as she rode him harder. 

He was already teetering on the edge when she ducked her head and sunk her teeth into the skin over his collarbone. Pleasure burst in a shock of blank white bliss as his release snapped through him almost painfully. His head rocked backward, eyes squeezed shut as his entire body jerked, his wrists pulling against the binders until they bit into his skin. 

He sagged deep into the thin mattress, aftershocks still shivering through his body. After a few moments, the pleasure shuddering through him ebbed away and he could feel his cock beginning to soften as he opened his eyes. Mara was slumped forward, hands on either side of his chest, her eyes on his face. “How’s your head?” she asked as she sat up again. 

“Better,” he mumbled. 

Something knotted in his chest as he looked up at her, his eyes following the tumble of bright hair down the curve of her shoulder to the swell of her breasts. Nodding, she slipped from the bed and pulled on the clothes she’d discarded. 

“Can you make yourself fall asleep?” she asked, fastening her trousers. 

His brow furrowed. “Yes, why?” At that moment, his limbs leaden with post-orgasm lethargy, it felt like staying conscious would take more effort. 

Perching on the edge of the narrow bunk, she reached out and brushed her knuckles along his cheek. “You need the sleep. I’ll unlock the binders as soon as you’re unconscious.” Her hand slid down and rested on his chest, and when he looked up into her face, she cocked an expectant eyebrow. It took him a moment to process the fact that she would wait beside him until he dropped off, and as soon as the realization broke through the haze, he allowed himself to drift into sleep. 

* * *

Luke woke to an empty room. Mara had draped a blanket over him as he slept, and left the binders and keychip on the opposite bunk. Luke cleaned himself up a bit and dressed before he ran through the laborious process of reinforcing his shields. When he came out of his trance, he was surprised to find that over an hour had passed. 

Karrde was in the lounge when he cautiously ventured out of his room. “I let Mara have the main cabin,” he said over the rim of a cup of caff. “I’m on watch. She’s worked out at schedule.” 

There was a datapad on the table, with a meticulous schedule, every minute accounted for until their arrival on Coruscant. There was no more than a fifteen-minute overlap between their schedules, and Luke saw little of Mara before their arrival on Coruscant. Like on the Skipray they’d taken to the _Chimaera,_ she somehow managed to create distance between them on the ship with only a few cabins and a single lounge. 

Luke wondered if she regretted what had happened between them. He never had a chance to ask. 

* * *

Han and Leia were waiting for him when they landed the _Falcon_. It felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d seen his family. He didn’t want to let go when Han pulled him into a hug, but he broke off when Leia approached, moving carefully. 

“Don’t say anything,” she said, eyes narrow. 

“You’re beautiful,” he blurted, instantly disobeying her. 

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Han said. 

“I feel...all over the place,” Leia said. He had to lean over her belly to hug her. “Are you alright, Luke?” 

“No,” he whispered into her hair. 

He drew back, and she lifted a hand to his cheek. “Oh, Luke.” 

Behind her, he could see Karrde and Mara striding toward the exit, Mara with a bag slung over her shoulder, and Karrde’s hand at her elbow. 

“You need to call a Council meeting,” Luke said. “Karrde has something to share with them. It’s urgent.” 

* * *

Mara wasn’t present at the disastrous Council meeting in which Fey’lya sabotaged their proposal to retrieve the _Katana_ fleet, and Karrde sent her off on a mission before Luke could speak with her again. It was probably for the best, he thought, disappointment warring with a sense of relief that she was out of range of the command. For the time being. 

Luke raced from the Council meeting to the hangar with the rest of the team leaving for the _Katana_ mission. There was no time to think about the command, though it thrummed quietly at the back of his head; no time to think about Mara and the way she looked when she came around him. 

Later. There would be time for that later. 

* * *

On the bridge of the Katana flagship, Luke watched the flaming wing of a TIE fighter soar by the viewport, spinning off into the black. The dark of space was lit by a momentary flash as something else exploded just beyond the curve of the viewport’s frame. 

The Imperials were retreating, limping away from the battle, having lost the skirmish but won the race for the _Katana_ fleet. Onboard the _Katana,_ he and Han and the retrieval team had survived by the skin of their teeth. As usual. 

There were others, out in the battle, who weren’t so lucky. 

Luke staggered as a flash of pain and terror wiped his mind clear. His vision went white. 

_Mara? Mara—_

“Luke?” He heard Han call out, concerned. 

Mara had been hit. Her small starfighter had been in the thick of the battle, near one of the Star Destroyers, hit by one of the ion beams as the ship spun out of control. 

Hit, unconscious—but still alive. She was out there in the chaos, injured, lost— _vulnerable._

“Han,” Luke said slowly. “Take out your blaster and put it on stun.” 

“Why? What’s going on?” 

Luke didn’t look away from the viewport. “Mara’s out there. Her ship was hit in the battle and I need to find her.” 

It took Han a minute. “Kriff, Luke, I don’t think—”

“Please, Han.” His voice was strained, sounding strange even to himself. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Han drew his blaster. Luke let the shields fall, let the command slip from his control. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

He knew exactly where she was. His voice sounded distant and calm as he spoke into the comm. “Patch me through to the recovery team. There’s a survivor who ejected from a Z-95.” He rattled off the exact coordinates, eyes fixed on the point in space where she would be. 

“Pick her up. I’ll meet the shuttle at hanger besh five.” 

As soon as he boarded the recovery ship, she would be his, he thought as he pulled his lightsaber from his belt. It would be quick. She was half-dead already. 

Spinning around, he found himself facing the barrel of Han’s blaster. 

And everything went dark. 


	8. Chapter 8

Hundreds of stars speckled the dark sky—no, not stars. Not the sky. 

Luke blinked at the glimmering points of light, knowing there was something _off_ about the configuration of constellations slowly rotating overhead. The night skies above a planet have never looked quite so perfectly arranged; each star shining with the exact same brilliance no matter where they spun in the sky. He blinked again. Not real stars, but a holomap of the galaxy, each satellite fixed in relation to the central core. Above the stars was the dark, vaulted ceiling of a massive hall. At the end of the hall, on a raised platform, he could make out the shape of a throne. He was certain that it was another one of the Emperor’s throne rooms, though not one that he’d ever seen before. 

_Mara. Where was Mara?_

The artificial starlight fell on a body on the ground. 

“Mara!” He dropped to his knees beside her. Her head was turned away from him. There was a lightsaber burn in the middle of her chest, and blood seeping out from under her body, soaking the ground. There was so much blood. _There shouldn’t be so much blood—_

The command was silent. 

When he turned her head her eyes were empty, glazed, lifeless, the lines of her face still twisted in fear. He did this. _“Mara.”_ It came out half-sobbed. 

For the first time, he hadn’t been forced to live out the act of killing her, though he knew that she had died at his hand and despair sunk into him like a heavy fog, weighing him down. It was cold, so cold. 

Soft footfalls broke the silence as the Emperor approached. Luke gripped his lightsaber so tight in his hand the metal bit into his skin. 

“Well done, my apprentice,” C’baoth said. 

Luke’s head shot up. Not the Emperor—C’baoth, his face glowing in approval as he rested a hand on Luke’s shoulder. 

“This is how it must be,” he said. “She had to pay for her disloyalty. She failed her former master and she tried to turn you against me. For this, she had to die.” 

_No._ The words rang through his head, empty of everything except a drumming grief. _No, no, no, no—_

Luke jerked awake. Pain jolted through his neck where it had been bent at an odd angle against the side of the couch in Han and Leia’s apartment. He blinked blearily around the dark, empty room. Coruscant glittered mercilessly through the wide window that stretched along the far side of the apartment. The warm, familiar furnishings looked washed out in the dim light from the windows, distorted by the gloom. 

He shouldn’t have fallen asleep here. His limbs felt heavy and sluggish; the nightmare left a sour taste in his mouth. 

C'baoth, the unfamiliar throne room—it hadn’t been a warped memory or a fragment from his past. Could it be a vision of the future? 

_Always in motion, the future is._

For a moment, Luke has to swallow back the bile that rises in his throat. His vision swam, and it felt as though something hard and sharp had crystallized in his chest. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE.

Mara wasn’t dead—yet. In the medical wing on the far side of the Imperial Palace, she lay in a medically induced coma as the medics worked to repair the damage the ion cannon had done to her brain. He’d expected the command to fade during the weeks that Mara had spent unconscious, but the compulsion continued to scratch at the corners of his mind. Karrde had installed ysalamiri in her room, so that her presence didn’t beckon to him across the city, but Luke knew that he could still find her if he put his mind to it. 

It would be so simple to slip into her room. Tampering with the machines that kept her alive would only take minutes, if he wanted to kill her discreetly. The void of space hadn’t taken her because he’d found her from the wreckage, so that she would die at his own hands, as he had been commanded. 

The ysalamir in his apartment—not so much a gift from Karrde as a demand—gave him temporary relief from the effort of holding back the compulsion, but it came worming back into his head whenever he left the apartment. The dark side felt closer and closer every day, fueled by all of his fear and shame, and the constant stress and anxiety of the command eating away at him. 

Even in the ysalamir’s bubble, he still dreamed. Instead of Mara’s death, imagined over and over, he found himself back in the _Falcon_ , back in the narrow bunk with her. Sometimes his hands were bound to the bunk, sometimes they were free to grasp her hips as she rode him. Sometimes he flipped them over and fucked her into the thin mattress until she cried out, nails digging to his back. The stream of erotic images left him hard and wanting when he woke to his empty bed. 

He scrubbed his hands over his face. 

“Hey. Luke.” 

“Han.” The sound was muffled through his fingers. 

Han clicked on an ornate lamp made of Rylothian silver, and light spilled out in a weak pool by the door. Luke heard the soft tread of Han’s sock-covered feet across the carpet. He lifted his eyes as Han sat down beside him, concern creasing his forehead. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

“I don’t know if I can.” He’d tried with Leia, and just ended up babbling and mixing his metaphors—and Leia could pick up on his emotional state in a way that Han couldn’t. Putting it all into words seemed like an insurmountable task. 

He should have been spending more time with Leia; he’d only spend a few days with her here and there throughout the course of her pregnancy. He’d failed her as a teacher, and as a brother. He failed, again and again—cold trickled down his back. All this self-pity reeked of the dark side. Han was trying to help—and all Luke could think about was himself. And Mara. 

It came tumbling out before he could help himself. “I slept with Mara.” 

“You—what?” 

Luke buried his face in his hands. 

“What. Were you. _Thinking.”_

“I don’t—I _wasn’t.”_

“Do you _want_ to become a murderer? Lose it all? Because you couldn’t keep your hands off Mara Jade?” 

“I know.” 

“You could have _killed her,_ Luke. I’ve seen you try it before. You put _her life_ on the line.” 

“I know,” he whispered. 

Han put a hand on his shoulder. “Luke.” His voice was gentle. “I get it. She’s a firecracker. But you can’t risk her everything like that.” 

Luke lifted his head from his hands, but kept his gaze fixed on the floor, without really seeing the geometric shapes on the carpet. “I should have said no, but…” He swallowed, his throat tight. “I didn’t hurt her. Nothing happened. It won’t happen again.” 

“Are you in love with her?” Han asked. Trust Han to cut right to the heart of the matter, without preamble. 

“I don’t know. Maybe. No.” Luke sighed. “I don’t know. My head’s a mess. I don’t know what to do, Han. I can’t remove the command on my own, and I can’t trust C’baoth again.”

His friend didn’t have an answer; no one did. 

“If I can’t find a cure…” Luke continued, finally voicing a thought that had been tugging at his mind for weeks. “I could strand myself on Myrkr. Permanently. I wouldn’t be able to sense her there. She’d be safe.”

“But you can’t be a Jedi there,” Han said. 

There was more to being a Jedi than his own ability to use the Force, but it did feel like he was condemning himself to a bleak existence, unable to feel the luminous pulse of the galaxy around him. 

And his dream of founding a new Jedi Order would be over. “I won’t be able to train the twins. I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t talk like that,” Han said. “You’ll find a cure.” 

“Hey,” Luke said with a weak smile. “I thought I was the foolishly optimistic one.” 

“Yeah, you’re really letting me down here,” Han drawled. 

Their smiles faded and they were quiet for a moment. 

“I need to get out,” Luke said, haltingly. The words scraped out past the lump in his throat. “Leave Coruscant. It’s too hard, keeping it at bay for so long. There’s a mission to the Berchest system, to trace the shipments of Thrawn’s clones back to their source. I can—I’ll do that.” 

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Han said. “We’ll take care of Mara when she wakes up. Make sure she always has a ysalamir with her.” 

“Thank you.” Now that he’d decided to go, he felt a weight lift from his shoulders. 

“Now go home and get some rest.” 

* * *

He flew to Calius saj Leeloo on Berchest. In the orange-hued alleys of the crystal city, he ran into Talon Karrde, lurking beneath an exquisitely carved archway. Waiting for him. 

“I see the universe hasn’t run out of ways to surprise me,” the smuggler said. 

“Have you had any news of Mara?” Luke asked him after they’d exchanged wary pleasantries. Luke knew that Karrde had people in the Palace watching her, and Luke had been out of touch the moment he stepped in his X-wing days ago. 

Karrde didn’t answer at first. He searched Luke’s face and, after a long moment, said, “she’s still unconscious. The neural reconstruction is going well, and the doctors think she’ll regain consciousness soon. Repairing that kind of light neural damage isn’t difficult, just time-consuming. I appreciate that your people took her to Coruscant. Our own medical facilities wouldn’t have been up to the task.”

“It was the least I could do for her.”

From the expression on Karrde’s face, he agreed. “Will you be returning to Coruscant after your mission?” 

“Yes, but I won’t go near her,” he promised. 

“Good. I plan to have her removed as soon as she’s recovered. I understand that this isn’t in your control. But my priority is keeping Mara safe.” 

“I agree,” Luke said. “The further she is from me, the safer she’ll be.” As if he couldn’t hunt her to the edges of the galaxy if she ever left the ysalamir’s bubble. 

Myrkr. He’d isolate himself on Myrkr to give her the life she wanted. 

“I’ve been searching for a cure as well,” Karrde said. 

Luke was taken aback. “For the command?” 

Karrde nodded. “If there’s anything to find on Sith practices in any public or private databases in the galaxy, my people will find it. But there isn’t much to find. Nothing on Force-inflicted compulsions implanted into an unwilling subject’s mind. We’ll keep looking.” 

At Luke’s expression, he said, “I want my Second back as soon as possible, without the threat of execution from the galaxy’s only Jedi.” 

It wasn’t just that, Luke thought. Karrde cared about Mara more than he would admit. It was there, in the tense lines on his face when he asked about Mara. 

“I owe my life to both of you,” Karrde said, his voice softening. “I haven’t forgotten that.” 

“Now,” he continued, his tone turning businesslike. “I assume the New Republic’s only Jedi simply came to Calius saj Leeloo for a bit of sightseeing—hoping to see a familiar face or two. Or three, or four, or five.” He arched an eyebrow. “What sort of price would New Republic be interested in paying for any information on Thrawn’s clones?” 

* * *

Mara was awake when Luke returned to Coruscant. 

After parting from Karrde on Berchest, he traveled on to Poderis, which had proved to be another dead end. The twins had been born while he was on Poderis, and Mara woke from her coma while he was repairing his ship on Honoghr after a brush with a Star Destroyer. He was on route to Coruscant when a team of Imperials broke into the Palace and attempted to kidnap the twins. 

A kidnapping that had been prevented by Mara, who had slipped through the palace and shot the kidnappers in the back. The news of the attempted kidnapping of the twins didn’t reach him until after he’d landed on Coruscant. Mara was under house arrest, being questioned by Palace Security for suspicion of collusion with Thrawn’s agents. 

It was absurd. 

_“Absurd,”_ Leia repeated again. “Mara saved our lives.” She was patting Jaina on the back almost too forcefully, but slowed down again when Jaina hiccupped and squirmed. When Luke took the baby from her, Jaina gave him a gooey smile and spit up down his front. 

“Han can lend you a new shirt,” Leia sighed, passing him a cloth to clean it up. “I can’t think about what would have happened if she hadn’t been here. I just—I can’t.” 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you.” 

“Oh, Luke,” Leia sighed. “I don’t blame you for not being here.”

“I know. I just feel so...ineffectual. Ever since the command was triggered. Thrawn’s poised to take over the galaxy and I've been—useless. Even that mission to Berchest didn’t pan out.” 

“You’ll find a way to get rid of it,” Leia said, echoing Han’s faith in him, faith that Luke felt he couldn’t live up to anymore. “I think you should go talk to her. She’s all alone and I think she’d appreciate it.” 

He considered returning to his apartment for the ysalamir frame—he did change into a shirt that wasn’t covered in spit-up—but the fact that he couldn’t sense her presence at all in the Palace complex was proof enough that she had been confined with the frame that sat by her bed in the medcenter. When the guard droid let him pass and the door to her rooms slid aside, he spotted the ysalamir that had guarded her bedside, connected to one of Karrde’s wearable frames in the corner of the room. 

Palace Sec had confined her to a small, single-room apartment, with space for a bed and desk, and a fresher. The far wall was lined with tall windows, helping ease the sense of confinement. Mara was seated on a chair by a window, datapand in her hands, the afternoon sunlight catching on her hair. 

He felt his chest go tight. He wanted to cross the room and kiss her, but instead, he stood at a polite distance, arms hanging at his sides. 

“You look like hell,” she said. 

“Uh.” After a moment of confusion, he laughed, without much humor. “I haven’t been sleeping well. Are you alright?” 

“Not enjoying the hospitality much,” she said. She stood and leaned back against the desk, datapad still held loosely in her hands, as if she expected him to leave in a matter of minutes. Thin lines of traffic crawled across the Coruscant skyline behind her head. A lock of hair had worked free from her braid and he itched to tuck it behind her ear. 

“I meant how you were feeling—I heard what condition you were in after the battle.” 

When the recovery crew had pulled her from the wreckage of her ejection seat, he’d been unconscious, cuffed to the wall in one of the Falcon’s storage rooms. 

“No lasting damage,” she said, shrugging away the month she spent in a coma as though it had been a minor inconvenience. There was a moment’s pause before she spoke again, hesitantly, her gaze dropping. “I didn’t think that anyone was going to find me out there.” 

Her ejection seat had been hit by an ion cannon, and without a functioning emergency beacon, the rescue crew never would have found her in the battle’s aftermath. He swallowed against the tightness in his throat. 

“Thank you,” she said. 

“It was the command,” he told her, feeling cold. 

From the unsurprised look on her face, she must have worked that out already.

“But I never would have left you to die. I would have found you.” 

“I know,” she said softly. This time she didn’t accuse him of misguided Jedi honor. 

For a few moments a delicate silence stretched out between them, and Luke wished more than ever that he could reach out through the Force and touch her mind with his. What did they mean to each other now? He was still a threat to her as long as the command was embedded in his head—no matter how much he wanted more. 

“I’m sorry about all this.” It felt like an awkward way to break the tension and he waved a hand at the room to indicate that his apology included her unjust house arrest. 

She rolled her eyes. “That’s definitely not your fault, Skywalker.” 

“I know. I just... wish things were different. Leia’s working on clearing your name.” 

“She stopped by too.” There was an odd expression on her face. “I told her who I used to be… and that I’m not that person anymore.” 

“I’m sure she understands,” Luke said. “You saved the twins. We all owe you for that.” 

He wished he’d been there—not only to help defend his family. There was a small, selfish part of him that wanted to see Mara take down Thrawn’s agents in person. 

“Did you find anything that might help with your head?” Mara asked. 

Luke shook his head. “I wasn’t looking for that—I was on a mission.” Karrde hadn’t given him any messages to pass on, but he should tell her about their meeting. “Trying to trace Thrawn’s clones back to their source—” 

“Clones?” she asked sharply. 

“Thrawn’s clones.” 

“What are you talking about?” Her brows drew together in genuine confusion, and Luke realized that no one told her what they’d discovered about Thrawn’s forces during the battle for the Katana. She's been in a coma when the news had streaked through the palace. 

“All of the soldiers who attacked the flagship were clones. That’s how Thrawn’s manning the Katana fleet. He’s producing clones faster than we thought possible. A mass-produced army.” 

“No one told me,” Mara said. She looked pale. “Kriff. That karking bastard.” 

“We haven’t figured out where they’re coming from. None of the old Republic cloning labs exist anymore. We haven’t been able to trace his fleet, but I thought if I could figure out where the clones are being made, we could disrupt his supply line, or shut down the labs, but… no luck.” 

A distant look came over Mara’s face as he spoke and he wasn’t sure she was listening anymore. “Mara?” 

Her gaze snapped back onto his face. “I know where they’re coming from. I know where Thrawn’s Spaarti cylinders are.” 

Luke stared at her. “Are you sure?” 

Her hands were gripping the datapad so tight her knuckles had gone white. “The Emperor had a private storehouse. It was beneath a mountain on an Outer Rim world he called Wayland—I don’t know if it even had an official name. It was where he kept his mementos and souvenirs and odd bits of technology he thought might be useful someday. One of the artificial caverns had a complete cloning facility. It held at least twenty thousand cylinders. Maybe more.” 

_Twenty thousand cylinders._

“Force,” Luke cursed. “Could you find it again?” 

“Yes. If I had access to charts and a nav computer.” 

“How heavy are the planet’s defenses?” 

“There was only a skeleton crew running the garrison when I was there, but that was when the Emperor was still alive. If I were Thrawn, I would have left at least a Star Destroyer in orbit. Although…” She tilted her head, considering. “He may not have. It’s the one secret he can’t afford to lose, so the fewer people in the know, the better. It wouldn’t have to be a big operation. A small unit to defend the mountain, support crew, and a staff to run the cloning labs.” 

“We could take it out with a small sabotage crew.” 

“Maybe.” 

He recognized the doubtful expression on her face from the trip to the _Chimaera_ , as they’d argued over the best way to infiltrate a Star Destroyer and he almost smiled. 

“I need to talk to Leia. And Han.” 

They had to move quickly. If word that Mara knew about Wayland got back to Thrawn via Delta Source, her life would be forfeit again. Luke was not going to let that happen. 

“I’ll be back when we have a plan.” 

She lifted two fingers to her temple in a mock salute and this time he smiled in spite of himself. There was a sense of relief threading through him, and he thought he saw the same in her face. She’d just offered them the opportunity to take out one of the cornerstones of Thrawn’s campaign—the very thing that Luke had spent the last month searching for. 

There was no time to lose. 

* * *

The mission to Wayland came together that evening. Luke had gathered those closest to him—Leia and Han, Chewie, Winter, and Lando—in Han and Leia’s new apartment on the other side of the Palace. With Delta Source still active, he wouldn’t risk Mara’s safety sharing the information with anyone else, in any other part of the Palace. They were all in agreement that a team should be sent to Wayland as soon as possible—and they didn’t have a lot of options. Rogue Squadron was out of range and they didn’t have time to gather their usual allies, so it was down to the people in the room—and Mara. 

“Winter can smuggle a nav computer into Mara’s room,” Leia said. “We can send a team as soon as we have the location—”

“No,” Luke said. “We can’t leave her behind. She’s the key to everything.” He could feel the pulse pounding in his head. 

“What do you mean by that, Luke?” 

He shook his head. He wasn’t sure he could explain. “I have to go too.” 

“Hell, no,” Han said, crossing his arms. 

Leia put a hand on his arm. She was still looking at Luke carefully. “Do you think you can stay in control the entire mission?” 

“I’ll take a ysalamir with me. As long as I keep the frame with me, Mara will be safe.” 

Han grimaced. “You can’t fight very well in one of those things. What if we run into trouble? We’re going to run into trouble.” 

“I have to go.” His hands were starting to shake. A humorless laugh burst out of him. “I guess it’s one of those crazy Jedi things.” 

Even without looking, he knew that Han and Leia were having a wordless conversation above his head. 

“Luke.” Leia put a steadying hand on his. “Are you sure?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then we’ll do it.” 

In the face of her trust, he almost wavered. She squeezed his hand. 

“Alright, then,” Han said, still frowning. “Now, what’s the matter with you, Chewie?” 

There was a minor argument over whether Chewie or Han would stay behind to protect Leia and the twins, until Leia overruled them all. The Noghri would stay behind on Coruscant as Leia’s honor guard, freeing up both Han and Chewie for the mission. As soon as all the details were set, they sprang into action, each playing their role in assembling a mission—roles long familiar from their time in the Rebellion together. 

Lando knew a technique for rigging a retraining bolt to a guard droid, and after they’d both retrieved their go-bags and Luke had the ysalamir frame strapped securely to his back, they headed to the level where Mara had been confined. 

Mara’s room was dark when he opened the door and, for a moment, Luke was afraid that an Imperial agent had somehow slipped past the guard droid, before remembering how late it was. He stood in the doorway for a moment, his eyes adjusting to the half-light. Behind him, the guard droid made an indignant squeal as Lando affixed a restraining bolt to its side. 

The outlines of the objects in the room were just beginning to take shape when he saw Mara roll out of the bed and fling a datapad at his head. It clipped his shoulder and smacked against the doorframe before falling to the floor. 

“Ow,” he said, rubbing at his shoulder and stepping further into the room so the door slid shut behind him. “It’s me.” 

“Skywalker?” 

He could see her shadowy form as she stood and switched on the light by her bed. Her eyes tracked up to the ysalamir frame jutting over his shoulders. She had been sleeping in a long loose tunic over basics. His eyes stuck on her bare legs for a moment before he looked away, cheeks heating. 

“We’re leaving for Wayland tonight. Now.” He held up a carryall. “Can you be ready in ten minutes?” 

“Less than. There’s not much to pack.” 

Mara pulled the tunic over her head and tossed it on the bed. The only thing she'd been wearing underneath was Yoma's pendant. A startled sound leapt out of his mouth and he jerked his gaze away. 

“What’s the matter? You’ve already fucked me. Several times.”

 _“Mara,”_ came out strangled. “I–I’m sorry about that.” 

“I’m not.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her move to the cabinets on the wall and pull out a change of clothes. 

_That wasn’t the same,_ he thought, keeping his eyes fixed on the carpet, _this was different—_

“Luke. You can look.” It was the voice she had used back in his bunk on the Falcon and he flushed, even as he obeyed, lifting his head. Now that he had her permission, he let his eyes move over her, drinking her in. She smirked as she fastened her bra. There was nothing seductive in the way she pulled on a pair of pants and a plain shirt—except for the suggestive gleam in her eye. 

As soon as she was fully dressed, she scooped the rest of her clothes and toiletries into the carryall. He helped her pull the straps of the ysalamir frame over her shoulders. The frames weren’t as heavy as they looked, but they were bulky and awkward. The sessile lizard in the frame blinked at him without alarm. As soon as the straps were secure, Mara picked up the carryall again and turned to face him. 

“I have your holdout,” he said, offering her the weapon. 

Relief washed over her face as he handed her the holdout Palace Security had confiscated. He wasn’t sure how Winter had slipped it out of Palace Sec’s possession, but he was glad she had. 

“Thank you,” she said quietly, strapping the tiny blaster to her wrist. 

“Ready to go?” Lando called from the door. 

“I’m ready,” Mara called. “Were you able to secure an assault team?” 

“We had to move fast and we couldn’t risk the mission being leaked. It’s just you and me, Han, Chewie, and Lando.” 

Five people. Five against whatever force Thrawn had posted to protect one of his most valuable assets. 

Mara’s eyebrows rose. “You sure we’re not being unsporting about it?” 

Lando snorted and gave Mara an appraising look. 

“We infiltrated a Star Destroyer and rescued Karrde on our own,” Luke pointed out. 

“True.” She smirked. “Alright, let’s go blow up Thrawn’s clone factory.” 

“Good to have you with us, Mara,” Lando said, brisk but warm, as he led them on a convoluted route out of the Palace to an old private landing pad where the _Falcon_ was docked. He charmed them past several curious Palace employees—people Luke didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure Lando knew either, though his friendly and confident demeanor never faltered. 

It didn’t take long. Chewie nodded to them as they came up the _Falcon’s_ ramp, sealing the ship closed behind them. They maneuvered around a stack of supply crates half-loaded into a shipping compartment in the corridor. The floor under their feet gave a slight lurch as the ship lifted off the ground. 

“Where are we headed?” Han asked, looking back over his shoulder as they entered the cockpit, Chewie dropping into the co-pilot’s chair with a grunt. Luke wedged the ysalamir frame between the jumpseat and the floor before sitting behind Han’s chair. 

“Set course for Obroa-skai,” Mara said. “That was the last stop before Wayland on that trip. I should be able to have the rest of it plotted out by the time we get there.”

“Better strap in—we’ll be making the jump to lightspeed as soon as we’re clear.” 

Even without the Force, Luke could sense the current of tension running through the cockpit. He knew that Han and Chewie were sick with worry over leaving Leia and the twins behind, regardless of how many Noghri had sworn to protect them. Mara was lost in thought, her eyes on Coruscant as the _Falcon_ rose above the city. Then she seemed to shake herself and turned to the nav station, her fingers moving methodically over the panel as she calculated the route to Wayland. 

It was past midnight, Coruscant time. As soon as the blue lines of hyperspace streaked across the viewport, Han said, “alright, we’re off. Might as well get some sleep.” 

Luke hoisted the ysalamir frame back onto his back and followed Mara out of the cockpit. Ahead of them, he saw Lando disappear around the curve of the corridor toward the second bunkroom, the one that had been a storage room before Han had joined the Rebellion. Lando had used the room when he and Chewie and Leia had been searching for Han and, like Luke, he kept up the habit, even though Luke knew that Lando hadn’t left any personal effects behind after the war. 

Mara opened the door to the first bunkroom—the same bunk room they’d shared on the trip to Coruscant—and entered it without hesitation. The room was just as they’d left it, a little over a month ago, the bunks neatly made, a spare blanket laid over the bunk that Luke usually slept in. 

The bunk that they’d both used for...another purpose on that trip from the _Chimaera_. Mara tossed her carryall onto the opposite bunk and strapped the ysalamir frame to a hook on the wall nearby. 

As though she sensed his gaze on her, her hands slowed on the straps, and she looked over, her brow furrowing when she caught him watching her. “I can sleep in Calrissian’s room, if you’d rather,” she said. It probably wasn’t a good idea for them to share a room—Han was going to tell him it was a _bad_ idea—even if she was safe as long as the ysalamiri were present. 

But—“I’d like it if you stayed in here,” he said, conceding to the deep pull within him to keep her near, no matter the risk. 

_Not because of the sex, of course,_ he thought. _Now that they had the ysalamiri, there was no need to use...other measures to drown out the command—_

In two short steps her body was pressed up to his, and his hands went reflectively to her hips. He could feel the heat of her breath on his cheek. 

“I could tie you to the bed again,” she murmured in his ear. 

The words lanced through him and his hands spasmed against her hips. He bit out her name like a curse before dropping his head to capture her lips in a frantic, hungry kiss. Her mouth was hot and eager against his. She wrapped her hands around his shoulders and the bite of her blunt nails into the back of his neck jerked him back into himself. 

He drew away reluctantly, taking a deep breath to steady his hammering heart. “Not—not tonight. We’re all tired.” 

With a short nod, Mara disentangled herself and stepped away. Her mouth was red and bruised-looking, and he watched her take a few steadying breaths as well. 

He hooked his own ysalamir above his bunk before dropping on to the mattress and peeling off his jacket and boots. Exhaustion hit him and he didn’t bother to take off the rest of his clothes before rolling onto the bunk. 

In spite of his exhaustion, he didn’t drop off right away. Eyes closed, he listened to the sound of Mara moving around the room, stowing her belongings and changing into sleepwear. 

“Hey.” 

At the sound of her voice, he opened his eyes, blinking up at her. 

“Budge over.” She nudged his hip with her knee. 

He shifted over and she lay down on her side in the space he vacated. Her back was turned toward him as though she were placing herself between him and the rest of the room. _Protecting him,_ he thought muzzily, half asleep already, the way he would place his own body in front of hers in a firefight. Knowing he was reading too much into the gesture, he fell into sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

Mara cried out, a reedy wail that echoed against the cabin walls. His fingers dug into her skin, holding her tight as she jerked and shuddered. Her head fell back, and then rolled forward limply before she collapsed against his chest, forehead pressed against his collarbone and her breath warm against his skin. Luke took a shaky breath, eyes screwed shut as aftershocks rippled through him, pleasure still surging through him even as the intensity of his orgasm began to fade. 

“Okay?” Mara murmured against his chest. Within the ysalamir bubble, he could touch her, grip her hips as she came around him, run his hands over her back, damp with sweat. 

“Mmm-hmm.” He needed another moment before he was coherent. 

Mara responded with a dry chuckle. Another moment passed before she peeled herself away, letting him slip from her body with a sigh. A disgruntled sound escaped him, and Mara laughed again. She sat up and rolled her neck, the joints popping. He wanted to pull her back against him, to lie sticky and sated with her wrapped around him—but they would be landing on Wayland in a few hours. 

With the ysalamiri present to block his connection to the Force, Luke had slept well on the trip, and when he hadn’t, Mara was there. When he jolted out of an unsettling, unfocused dream, she shucked off his sleep pants and took him in her mouth. 

This wasn’t about drowning out the command anymore, though it did serve to distract him from the dread that was eating away at him. At both of them. 

Mara slipped out of bed, wrapped herself in a robe—his robe—and left the room for the sonic shower in the small fresher down the hall. As soon as she was gone, Luke sat up and scrubbed his hands up and down his face. All the dread and despair crept back in the moment she left the room. He took a deep breath, attempting to settle the swarm of insecurities that battered around the inside of his head. Eventually, he was able to slip into a state of meditation which was as close to the Force as he was able to manage these days. 

When Mara returned, she passed him the robe so that he could take a turn in the shower. She was gone when he finished, and he dressed alone. 

Han hadn’t said anything about them sharing a bunk room, and if Chewie and Lando found anything remarkable about the arrangement, they didn’t say anything to Luke. At one point in the trip, Artoo and Threepio cornered him in the lounge, enquiring about the “safety procedures” being taken. Luke had to reassure them that he never left the ysalamir bubble and that Mara had her own bunk and was comfortable. With the way sound traveled on the Falcon, he was sure that everyone overheard. He didn’t think the droids would make the same assumptions a human would about them sharing a room, but if anyone suspected anything, they continued to pretend that Mara slept in the other bunk every night. He expected a lecture from Han, but it didn’t come. They were all too preoccupied with the mission ahead of them. 

He could sense the shift in the engines as they hit atmo and the ship began its descent toward the planet. Lando was just leaving his bunkroom at the same time Luke stepped into the corridor. “Landing soon,” Lando said, adjusting his mottled green camo jacket. It was perfectly tailored, which made Luke smile. Together they made sure that the droids were secured and all everything was braced for a landing. The journey to the floor of the forest was smooth—for the most part. Luke could tell, from years of experience, that the series of jolts the ship made as it approached meant that it had lopped off the tops of a few trees on the way down. 

Han was waiting for him by the open hatch. Wordlessly, he held out Luke’s lightsaber—the lightsaber Luke had surrendered before they’d left Coruscant. 

“No,” he said, staring at the lightsaber in Han’s hand. 

“The ysalamiri are working,” Han said. “I’d feel more comfortable if you had your lightsaber, in case anything happens out there.”

“What if something goes wrong?” 

“Everyone’s armed and we won’t hesitate to stun you if anything gets out of hand.” 

_“Anything?_ —I could kill Mara.” 

“Yeah, but you won’t. You’ve kept it under control before. You and Mara spent a couple weeks together when you rescued Karrde and you kept it under control.” 

“No, I didn’t. I attacked her twice on that mission. Han…” Everything fell out of him in an unhappy rush. “I don’t go away when the command takes control. I mean that I’m aware—I’m still me. I’m conscious the whole time, even though I’m doing what the command tells me to do. I can’t stop it. I can see it happening—I _make it_ happen. I just can’t stop myself. I can’t. I’m not safe.” 

“I’m sorry, kid,” Han said. He was quiet for a moment, and then he held out the lightsaber again. “We need you, Luke. As a Jedi.” 

“Am I useless without it?” Luke bit out, the words bitter. 

“No, course not,” Han said. “There’s no one I’d rather have at my back in a fight. But I’ve seen what you can do with it even without the Force.” 

Still reluctant, Luke took the lightsaber. His hand closed around the familiar shape, the raised grip and grooves meeting the matching calluses they’d formed on his fingers. Without the Force, the lightsaber didn’t sing to him, didn’t feel as though it knew his touch instinctively. It was just a weapon, cold and heavy in his hand. It was harder to handle without the Force, without the ability to sense the energy pulsing through the blade and guide its direction. Luke would have to call on instincts honed through years of using the weapon. 

“Mara could carry it—” 

“No.” Mara came around the curve of the hallway, a pack slung over one shoulder, ysalamir frame strapped to her back. “I can’t use it like you can.” 

“You will be able to, one day,” he promised her. 

A half-smile. “One day.” 

If he got rid of the compulsion to kill her— _no,_ he thought— _when._ “When the command is gone, I’ll teach you,” he vowed. 

“I’ll hold you to that.” She shifted her shoulders, settling the frame securely against her back before heading down the ramp. Luke followed her into the clearing where the _Falcon_ had landed. They were surrounded by thick forest on all sides, a dense, deep green. 

He caught sight of a large animal lurking in the trees around the clearing where the _Falcon_ had landed. Grey-furred, with a white spots speckled across its sides and back: a predator, by the look of its teeth and claws. There was another, watching them from behind a thicket. A mated pair or a pack? Either way, they kept their distance. Han was watching them too, blaster drawn. 

“You and Mara start bringing the equipment down,” Han said. “Start with the speeder bikes. Lando, you’re high cover. Stay sharp.”

“Right,” Lando said.

The transport restraints that had secured the speeders to the wall of the hold made a popping sound as the speeders snapped free and hovered above the floor of the hold. Mara passed the first speeder to Chewie, and then towed the second down the ramp. Luke waited his turn, hands on the speeder’s handlebars. Chewie pulled his speeder to the center of the clearing and switched it on, fiddling with the control panel as he tested the setting. From ahead of him, Luke heard an answering hum from Mara’s speeder. 

It happened nearly too fast for him to track. He heard a growl, barely audible under the sound of the speeder’s engine, the sound of branches cracking, and the creatures leapt out of the forest, streaking across the clearing towards Mara and Chewie. 

Without the Force, there had been no warning. No warning at all. Luke lunged forward, his hand going to his lightsaber—too slow. His movements felt sluggish, as though he were moving through water. 

Mara went down, hitting the ground heavily. The creature yowled, tangled in the ysalamir frame on her back. It was enough of a distraction for Luke to reach her, the humming blade cutting through flesh and bone. 

The body half fell against Mara, and Luke frantically shoved it aside. A memory of the vornskr attack on Myrkr flashed through his head, the gashes the animal had torn into her back swimming before him. 

“Mara! Are you hurt?” 

She rolled onto her side with a grunt, the bulky ysalamir frame restricting her movement. 

“I’m fine— _Skywalker!”_

Once again, there was no warning but Mara’s shout. Before he’d even turned his head, she flung up her arm, the bolt from her holdout searing by his ear. The shot hit the creature’s shoulder and knocked it back. Howling, enraged, it attacked again. This time Luke met it, his teeth clenched as he swung his lightsaber hard into the charging animal. 

“Turn off the speeders!” he heard Mara shout. Chewie roared an answer over the sound of his bowcaster firing rapidly at the attacking creatures swarming out of the forest. 

Han had been right about the lightsaber. It only took a few swift, brutal blows, and the animal was dead. After it fell, Luke stood, breathing hard, lightsaber at the ready—to find he wasn’t needed. Han took out the last of the pack with a volley of shots. Chewie stood over two more, bowcaster aimed at the treeline. Another two had been shot at the perimeter of the clearing; Lando’s work. 

The clearing fell quiet as Lando shut off the last of the speeders. There was a long tense moment as everyone watched the edge of the forest, weapons at the ready. 

Han blew out a loud breath when nothing appeared. He looked over at the lightsaber in Luke’s hand and the dead animal at Luke’s feet and raised an eyebrow. Luke nodded back. Point taken. 

Behind him, Luke heard Mara spit out a vicious curse. He whipped around. “What’s wrong?” 

She was crouched over the ysalamir frame, and when she looked up her expression was grim. His heart sank. 

“The ysalamir is dead.”

“What?” As he stared at her, she moved aside to reveal what remained of the ysalamir frame that had been strapped to her back when the animal had attacked her. It was mangled and twisted in her hands, and ysalamir crushed between two poles that had snapped out of place when Mara had been thrown to the ground. The animal was unmistakably dead. 

It felt like his mind had stuttered to a stop, the ground dropped out from under him. 

“Luke. We’ll be fine. We still have one left,” she said, looking over his shoulder at the frame still strapped to his back. 

Closing his eyes, he took deep, steadying breaths, willing away the terror that was coursing through his body. There was nothing they could do about it now. With one living ysalamir, they could still make it to the mountains. 

When he opened his eyes again, Mara had walked over to where Chewie was crouched over one of the dead creatures, prodding it with a claw. 

“They’re called garrals,” Mara said. “The Empire used to use them as watchdogs, usually near heavily wooded frontier garrisons where probe droid pickets weren’t practical. There’s something in the ultrasonic signature of a repulsorlift that’s supposed to sound like one of their prey animals. They can hear a ship-sized repulsorlift coming in from kilometers away. Draws them like a magnet.” 

She crouched down and began to dig her fingers into the fur at the creature’s neck. “Check for a radiocollar. Or a tag,” she called over to Han. 

“No tags,” Han said, after a search. 

“Must be descendants of the group they brought in to protect the mountain,” Lando said. 

Han stood, hands on his hips, and turned in a half circle as he chewed his lower lip. “If we can’t use the speeder bikes, it means we’re walking. Eight or nine days, at the minimum. More if we run into trouble.” 

_We’re going to run into trouble._ Han’s words echoed back in Luke’s head. The smart thing would be for him to stay behind—but he’d already come this far, and he had to see it through, no matter what trouble found them. 

Once they had secured the speeders back in the _Falcon’s_ hold and reorganized their supplies, they set off toward the mountain. The journey went in fits and starts—in some places the going was easy, and in others it was a struggle to move Threepio and Artoo through the thick underbrush, both droids complaining loudly as they struggled through the forest. 

There was a particular thorny bramble that grew along the ground and seemed to live for the opportunity to tangle itself in Artoo’s treads, and when the little droid wasn’t getting snared in the brambles, a vine that hung from the trees in perilous snarls did the job. The vine’s sap was acidic, and stung the exposed skin of Luke’s left hand whenever he was tasked with cutting Artoo free. 

They discovered another of Wayland’s predators when one of the bunched vines revealed a nest of clawbirds. The creatures swarmed out in a mass of snapping beaks and razor-sharp claws, and there was a frantic moment as they fought off the unexpected attack. One of the clawbirds reached Threepio and set about trying to gnaw through his leg until Luke used the lightsaber to cut the creature away. Their teeth were too small to do any permanent damage, but it gave Threepio something else to complain about, at least. 

After several hours hacking through the underbrush, they found a dry streambed that allowed the droids to move more comfortably, and they followed the streambed’s meandering path for several miles before Han called a stop. 

Han was clearly unhappy about their rate of progress when they camped for the night. Everyone was worn out by the day’s trek, and the droids were discouraged by an environment they were ill-suited for, despite Luke’s half-hearted reassurances that they weren’t to blame. They ate a cold meal of ration packets without much conversation before crawling, one by one, into small rounded tents grouped in a loose circle. 

* * *

The next two days were much the same. The third night was overcast, and Chewie went hunting in the evening and roasted his catch over a small fire for dinner. 

Luke had packed a little coco powder, and this time Mara accepted the drink without comment. He took a seat on the ground near her, enjoying the heat pulsing off of the small fire in the center of the clearing. They sat quietly for a few minutes, sipping their hot chocolate. 

Mara rested the warm rim of her mug against her chin and spoke without looking away from the fire. “If you kill me after all—you’ll let Karrde know as soon as you get back to Coruscant?” 

“Of course,” Luke said. “You didn’t even have to ask. Is there anyone else…?” 

“No, just Karrde.” 

Anger hit him—no, not anger, _sadness,_ wrapped in a thin veneer of anger—that she believed that there was only one person in the galaxy that would care if she died. Only one person who might mourn her. 

“Is there anything I should say to him—any messages?” 

She shook her head, taking another sip of hot chocolate. “He’ll know what to do with my shares—if they’re still in my name.” 

Shares from an illicit smuggling ring—that was all. No messages, no personal effects that she cared enough about to pass on; no one to accept any remnants from her life. Luke clenched his hands around his warm mug. 

“I might end killing you instead, you know.” She gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “The New Republic will string me up if I come back after murdering their only Jedi.” 

“It would be self-defense, Mara. Anyone here would vouch for you.” 

“Perhaps.” She shrugged, pursed her lips. “It would be better if I had a statement from you, so that I’m not arrested for your murder if I have to kill you.” She raised a finger. “It has to be specific. It has to state that I have the right to execute you if you attempt to kill me while under the influence of the command—which has to be verified by two witnesses, since I doubt they’ll take my word on forbidden Sith Force compulsions. Your astromech can make the recording; Solo can verify it.” 

He felt his mouth hang open as he stared at her. 

“I don’t want to be prosecuted for your murder,” she said, meeting his gaze evenly. “Think of the legal fees.” 

“You’re screwing with me.” 

“She’s definitely screwing with you, mate.” Lando’s voice came from the other side of the fire. 

He huffed a laugh, dropping his head down onto his arms for a moment. She nudged his boot with hers, and when he looked at her face, the corner of her mouth curled up. Luke felt like her smile was for him alone. 

“I don’t understand how you can joke about this,” he grumbled. 

She tilted her head. “Don’t pilots make those sort of jokes before battle? What do the Corellians call it?—gallows humor? I thought half Rogue squadron was Corellian.” 

He supposed they did, though it was never a line of humor he was entirely comfortable with, and he said as much. 

Mara shrugged and fell quiet for a moment. 

“Don’t beat yourself up if you do manage to kill me.” Her voice was low—no more than a murmur—even though Lando had moved off toward his tent. “I probably deserve it.” 

“Mara, no—”

“Luke.” She met his gaze, her mouth set in a grim line before she continued. “I wasn’t the Emperor’s personal assistant. I have blood on my hands. I don’t think the galaxy will miss me.” 

“I will.” 

She turned her face away. 

“Do you really think you deserve to be killed?” he asked. 

Mara didn’t answer, her face still turned away. 

“Mara?” 

A cracked laugh fell out of her mouth. “I’m still going to fight like hell if you come after me.” With that, she stood and walked over to her tent without looking back. 

* * *

  
  


The forest was draped in a fine, misty drizzle when he woke in the morning. They broke camp in a sullen silence, with the exception of Threepio, who complained bitterly about the effects of moisture on droid joints. Chewie discovered a trail that had been cleared away, and after a short debate, they began to follow it through the forest. 

A marching order had developed after the first day of hiking, and they all fell into their expected positions as soon as they headed out. Chewie in the lead, Lando or Han chivving the droids at the rear. Luke, beside Mara. 

The rain left a soft dusting of silver drops on her hair. On impulse, Luke reached out and took her hand. She blinked, looking startled. After a moment, she glanced up at Lando’s back as he hiked along the trail ahead of them, but she didn’t drop his hand. Luke still wasn’t sure what Lando or Chewie knew or didn’t know; he simply didn’t care anymore. 

“I want you to train me,” Mara said abruptly. 

“What?” He turned his head to stare at her. “I can’t do that—I can’t use the Force.” 

“I can. I can step out of the bubble, at least long enough for a training session. You can tell me what I’m doing wrong.” 

Luke shook his head. “I can’t demonstrate anything or guide you through the process.” 

“I have the basics already, and we don’t have to do anything complicated,” she said. “You said you’d teach me to use a lightsaber.” After a pause, she said, carefully, “I think it would be useful for the mission.” 

Not just the mission, Luke knew. She could use the Force to defend herself, if anything happened to his ysalamir. And for whatever else waited for them in Mount Tantiss. 

“Alright,” he said reluctantly. “We can give it a try.” 

They walked together in silence until Artoo let out a wail of pure misery and Luke looped back to help Han free him from another tangle of acidic vines. 

That evening when they stopped to set up camp, Luke demonstrated a series of lightsaber katas within the safety of the ysalamir bubble. After he handed the lightsaber over to Mara, he leaned back against a tree, the ysalamir frame by his knee, as she watched her move through the exercise. He searched her face, looking carefully for the moment when she connected with the Force, letting it flow through her mind and body.

“More,” she said after she’d run through the sequence three times. 

Grinning, he tossed a large seedpod toward her. “Catch.” 

A quick intake of breath as she focused on the seedpod, her attention narrowing on the arc of the object through the air. It froze mid flight, hovering between them. He watched in pleasure as she held it aloft, trembling slightly in an uncertain grip. A second seedpod joined the first, spinning in an elliptical orbit around her.

“Show off,” he murmured with a smile, lobbing another seedpod in her direction. 

The first two seedpods dropped six inches as she struggled to maintain the split concentration necessary to float multiple objects and catch a third midair. But catch it she did, and all three rose up and began to drift in a wide circle. Luke picked up another seedpod, nearly buoyant with her triumph. 

* * *

“Hey! Dinner!” Han called. 

“Tomorrow?” Mara asked, eyes bright as the small system of airborne seedpods dropped to the forest floor. 

“Tomorrow,” Luke promised. 

Chewie had managed to get a small going, sputtering miserably in the fine rain, which had recommenced shortly after Luke and Mara had finished their first training session. No one was in the mood to sit around after dinner. 

In his tent, Luke arranged the ysalamir frame above the head of his bedroll in the cramped space. The creature was utterly still, in a state that seemed closer to hibernation than sleep. He’d been alarmed when it had happened the first night on Wayland, but it just appeared to be the creature’s natural response to the drop in temperature at night, and it revived in the morning, seemingly unbothered by transition. Not that a ysalamir could ever be called _lively;_ they were about as active as moss. 

Luke had just changed into his sleep clothes and wrapped himself up in his bedroll when he heard someone crouch by the opening of his tent. “Luke?” Mara’s voice was soft through the thin fabric of the tent, and he could see the vague outline of her body, silhouetted against the night. 

“Mara?” 

She snapped open the fasteners on the tent door and poked her head in. Her jacket, hastily thrown over her sleep set, was already misted with rain. 

“Is there something wrong? Are you okay?” 

“No, nothing wrong,” she said. 

Before he had time to protest, she crawled into the tent, pulled the door closed behind her, and hunched over him, tugging down the zipper of his bedroll. 

“Mara? Wh—”

“Shh.” 

Cold air smacked into his front where Mara had shoved the bedroll aside. She shuffled off of him and shrugged off her jacket, stuffing it by the door. Dropping forward onto hands and knees, she crawled awkwardly into the narrow space between his body and the wall of the tent. He scooted aside as much as he could, though there was barely enough room for both of them. Mara was warm, pressed up against his side, warmer still once she’d yanked the bedroll up over them both. 

He could feel her tense beside him, and he waited for her to speak—to rationalize why she’d come to warm his bed, in the most literal sense of the phrase—but she didn’t say anything. He half expected her to make some sort of blunt overture to sex, as she had on the ship, but she just lay beside him quietly. The only sound was the rain pattering against the tent. 

Something inside him settled as her breath began to even out and she relaxed against his side. For the first time since the flight to Wayland, it was easy to brush away the anxieties that usually plagued him once the day was over, and he fell into an easy sleep.

* * *

She was gone in the morning when Luke woke, but when he crawled out of the tent Han shot a sour expression in his direction. 

“How’s the lizard?” Han asked pointedly, crossing his arms. 

“Hardy,” Mara replied dryly as she walked over with a box of rations in hand. Han raised an eyebrow, scowl still intact. 

“It’s doing fine,” Luke told him as he sat in the open door of his tent and pulled the straps of the frame over his shoulders. “It seems healthy.” 

“Good,” Han said, redirecting his glare in Mara’s direction. She ignored him and passed Luke a ration bar before tearing open her own with her teeth. Han caught him staring at her, and Luke dropped his head and started peeling open his own ration bar with feigned concentration. 

That day the journey was hard; a long grueling trek up a rocky incline. They had fewer encounters with wildlife, and none at all with the local inhabitants of Wayland. Luke knew that Han and Chewie were concerned, as though their absence was a harbinger of an unforeseeable disaster. 

He was relieved to stop for lunch at midday. The right strap of the ysalamir frame had been digging into his shoulder and he needed to readjust the frame. He took it off and propped it on the ground beside him. They’d stopped by a large tree that had fallen not far from the hunting trail they were following through this section of the woods. Han had his foot propped up against the trunk of the tree and was talking quietly with Lando. The rest of the group was scattered around, stretching and easing their packs to the ground. 

He was readjusting the strap, a half-eaten ration bar on his knee, when he saw Mara stiffen out of the corner of his eye. She fell to her knees, her hand braced on the ground. 

“Mara?”

Mara gave out a strangled sound of shock, her eyes unseeing. He dropped the frame and bolted for her. 

Several things happened at once. Han shouted something that Luke didn’t catch, and Lando fired a warning shot in Luke’s direction, the blue shockwaves rippling in the corner of his vision. Luke staggered on the uneven ground and felt the Force flood back into him again. In an instant, the command snapped through his head—YOU WILL KILL M—

—and was cut off. 

_Apprentice Skywalker._ The voice drowned out everything else. _At last. I have been waiting for you—_

Luke threw himself back into the ysalamir’s void, tumbling onto the ground and landing hard on an elbow. 

Chewie appeared out of nowhere, scooping a massive arm around Mara and hauling her towards Luke. She gave a gasp as she hit the edge of the ysalamir bubble and shook her head, as though trying to clear it. Chewie let go and she dropped to her knees in front of Luke. He scrambled over to her. 

“Mara? What happened?” 

“C’baoth. He’s here.”

“Here?” The voice in his head. The voice that had silenced the command. “At Mount Tantiss?” He shouldn’t have insisted that she come to Wayland—this was his fault—

“Yeah.” She grunted. “Feels like he stuck his bloody fingers into my brain.” 

He pressed his hands to her face; the skin was cold under his fingers. 

“He’s waiting for us,” she continued. “Still spouting off about how he’s going to make us bow to his mastery. He’s still mad as a basket of goski snakes. This was all a trap. You need to get out of here.”

The temptation to turn back swam in front of him; to follow the trail back to the _Falcon_ and lock himself in until the mission was over. He could go on his own, get as far away from Mara as he could. It was the only way he could be sure that she would be safe from him. 

“No. I have to face him.” Even though the Force was still inaccessible to him, he knew the words were true in the same way he knew that he had to come to Wayland. Whatever awaited him at Mount Tantiss, he had to see it through. He’s known that all along. “You can go back to the ship, Mara—”

“No.” She threw the word back at him, hard and final. “You’re not facing him alone.” 

“But—” 

“No.” She pushed herself to her feet. “I’m not going to kneel at his feet, and neither will you,” she snarled. 

On his knees, he gaped up at her. Fierce, angry—and frightened too. But she wouldn’t let it drag her down. 

“Okay, kid?” Han called. 

Luke ran a shaky hand through his hair. “Yeah. We’re okay.” 

“Uh huh.” Han exchanged a look with Lando and holstered his blaster. It was obvious that everyone within earshot had heard their conversation, but he appreciated that Han wans’t going to make him repeat it. “Let’s get moving again, then. The sooner we get this over, the better.” 

The evening training sessions took on a new urgency now that they knew for certain that C’baoth was waiting for them on Mount Tantiss. Mara repeated everything that C’baoth had said to her, and it was clear that the Jedi master was still dangerously unstable. C’baoth had switched off the command at will just to send Luke a message, simply to _taunt_ him. What could he do if the ysalamiri failed? He already knew Luke’s weaknesses; knew the way to break through every carefully constructed mental shield that Luke had in place. He’d helped construct them. 

That night Mara didn’t even bother to pitch her tent. She spent the evening going through all of the exercises that Luke set her; and after they'd eaten she joined him in his tent. Like the night before, he held her until he fell asleep. 

* * *

The green-draped slopes of Mount Tantiss gave way to stark bare rock as the mountain towered over the forest, the dark summit eating up the sky as they drew nearer and nearer. Luke wondered what legends the native cultures told about the mountain before the Empire came and hollowed out its heart for their fortress. On other planets, people told stories of defeated giants turned into massive stone edifices, their bodies made landscape. Whether the mythological creatures were guardians or defeated enemies depended on the narrative. Luke wondered what myths the Myneyrshi and the Psadans told about their mountain. 

A few days before, they’d made contact with the Noghri team that had been shadowing them since they’d landed on Wayland, and came to an uneasy truce with the Myneyrshi and the Psadans. The natives of Wayland were preoccupied with driving out the Empire, and showed little interest in their mission to Mount Tantiss, but both sides agreed to an alliance, with the Noghri facilitating the accord. It was good to have allies, as Endor had handily proved. 

On the trail a few yards in front of him, Mara slowed to a halt, her face turned up toward the mountain. “What’s wrong?” he called, picking up his pace. 

“It’s the mountain,” she said distantly, face pinched in concentration. “It’s...dark.”

As he approached, she blinked and straightened, snapped out of her fugue. The ysalamir bubble, he realized. She’d sensed something through the Force, which had escaped her as soon as he’d moved into the range. He was seized by the irrational urge to tether her to him so that she wouldn’t wander out of the range of his ysalamir frame again. 

“Dark?”

“Like on Myrkr,” she said, eyes still on the mountain. “I don’t know. That’s what it feels like.” 

“If Mount Tantiss is a blank space in the Force like Myrkr, then the Empire's installed enough ysalamiri to make a void large enough that you can sense it—even from this distance.”

Mara nodded. “That’s one way to control him,” she muttered. 

“C’baoth? But there must be places in the mountain where there are no ysalamiri, or he wouldn’t have been able to contact us.” 

“Maybe they’re not for him—or not just for him.” 

“Then what are they there for?” 

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Within the towering pinnacle before them a powerful and unstable Jedi master waited from them, not to mention the garrison of trained Imperial troopers, protecting the cloning facility—

 _Clones._ “That’s how he’s doing it,” Luke said, the pieces falling together in his head as he spoke. “That’s how he’s producing clones so quickly. Something about the Force encourages their natural development, and removing the cloning chambers from the active influence of the Force allows for unnaturally fast development.”

Mara tipped her head to the side, considering. “Could be. We won’t know for sure until we take a look at the facility.” 

Destroying the cloning chambers and putting an end to Thrawn’s supply of clone soldiers was their first priority. As soon as they figured out how to sabotage the cloning facility, he would find C’baoth and confront him. The cold inevitability of the path in front of him 

Mara touched his arm. “Come on. We’re nearly there.” 

With effort, he tore his gaze away from black peak of the mountain. Mara slipped her hand in his, and with a sharp tug, drew him up the trail again. 

* * *

A few hours later, they reached the base of Mount Tantiss. Han immediately dismissed the frontal approach, and whatever distraction the Myneyrshi and the Psadans had engineered at the entrance to the fortress, they hadn’t included the offworlders in their plans. The Noghri discovered another possible entrance on the far side of the mountain—a series of the large air intake tunnels that had been drilled through layers of rock. The maw of the tunnel gaped like an open mouth, primed to swallow them whole. 

“Looks more like a retractable turbolaser turret than an air system,” Han muttered. 

“That’s Imperial design for you,” Lando said. 

“Reminds me of the bunker we had to break into on Endor. Except with a screen door. Easy—they might have intruder detectors.” 

“We’ll have Artoo check it out.” 

Luke backed away as Han and Lando discussed their approach. He just needed—a moment. He walked away from the group—not far enough out of earshot if someone called, but far enough that Han and Lando’s conversation faded to a distant murmur. The green before him blurred as he stared sightlessly at the forest in front of him. 

A twig snapped nearby as someone moved quietly up behind him. He didn’t need the Force to know it was Mara. 

“You all right?” 

He wasn’t—he hadn’t been for a long time. 

Mara stood underneath a large bromeliad, the serrated leaves casting jagged shadows across her face. Luke reached out and took both of her hands in his. 

“Mara. I want you to promise me something. I want you to promise me that if something happens in there, and—and I can’t control myself...you won’t hold back.” 

He swallowed, remembering her flippancy when she’d spoken about her death at his hands by the campfire. _How could he even ask such a thing?_ “I want you to promise me that you’ll kill me if you have to.” 

“I will.” 

Leia or Han would have argued with him. If their positions were reversed, he wasn’t sure that he could swear to do the same for her. 

“I don’t know what Palpatine intended when he implanted this compulsion, but the dark side...it’s so close.” 

If he had killed her back on Myrkr, he would have mourned the loss of a potential friend and future Jedi, someone who might have made his path less lonely. The grief would have been a weight, but one he would have learned to carry. 

If his control slipped or the ysalamir bubble failed and he killed her now, her death would leave him devastated—an oubliette from which he wasn’t sure he could ever climb out. If he fell into it, then—after all these years—the Emperor would have won in the end. Had the Emperor foreseen this? Was Mara’s death the key to his fall to the dark side? 

“I could fall. I...I don’t want to become my father.”

He could picture Leia before him, telling him that he was nothing like Vader—that he could never be anything like Vader, and he knew she was wrong. He’d always had that potential within him. He had just thought that after all the trials he’d faced, that he would be stronger. 

That his own mind would betray him, and that his connection to the Force itself would become the thing that could undo him, had never occurred to him. 

“Or—if C'baoth manages to wrest control of the command and turn me into his personal weapon…” 

Mara didn’t reassure him. She simply nodded, gripping his hand. He reached for her, cupping the back of her head and pulling her toward him. She met his lips with an equal hunger. 

_Not the last time, no please not the last time—_

Breaking the kiss, he leaned his forehead against hers, breathing hard and listening to the sound of her breath echoing his. He wished he could touch her mind with his; feel her presence, vibrant and _alive,_ in the Force. 

“Please live,” he whispered, more a prayer than a request. “Please.” 

Her eyes were still closed when he released her hands, and he kissed the tiny crease between her eyes. 

He pressed a light kiss to her forehead and stepped away, turning back toward the dark bulk of the mountain looming above them. 


	10. Chapter 10

Everything Mara had told them was true—decades ago, Palpatine had stolen hundreds of Spaarti cloning cylinders and brought the collection to Wayland, recreating an entire cloning center within an immense natural cavern in the heart of Mount Tantiss. Platforms ran along the outer wall of the cavern as if it were a vast interior arena, each level wider than the one above. Looking over the railing of the highest platform, Luke could see to the floor of the cavern, the descending levels like concentric rings. 

In the center of the cavern, a massive equipment hub rose out of the ground floor and was linked to each level by four narrow catwalks, resembling the spindly legs of an enormous arachnid. A half-lit lighting rig that ran along the underside of each platform washed the cavern in a cold blue-white light. Voices drifted up from the levels below, accompanied by the dull throb of machinery. The faint, sour-sweet smell of rancid bacta lingered in spite of the air-filtering system humming in the background. 

Mara came to join him, gripping the rail with white knuckles as she gazed down. 

Every single level below them was lined with Spaarti cylinders, extending down as far as Luke could see. Thousands of cylinders. Each level glowed with a constellation of tiny green lights, indicating that the cylinders—all of them—were active and occupied. Boxy imperial-style ysalamiri frames were placed at regular intervals along each platform, effectively creating a dead zone the size of the mountain itself. 

“We helped him, you know,” Mara said quietly. “When he first came to Myrkr. There’s a technique to harvesting ysalamiri and Karrde gave it to Thrawn’s people.” She gazed down at the thousands of tiny lights descending down as far as they could see. “He wouldn’t have helped if he knew.” 

Luke wondered if what she said was true—before Thrawn ran Karrde off Myrkr the smuggler had clung to his claim of neutrality and aided either side as it suited him. “Thrawn would have found a way even if you hadn’t helped him.” 

And once Thrawn had discovered the means to speed up the cloning process, he had built an army: stormtroopers and TIE pilots, officers and—

All the pieces fell together at once. “He’s a clone.” 

Mara looked over, her face pallid under the eerie blue cast of the artificial lights. 

“C’baoth,” Luke clarified, keeping his voice down so as not to alert the staff and guards in the levels below. “According to the records, he joined the Outbound Flight project before the Clone Wars began. There’s no records of anyone surviving the project—it just disappeared into Wild Space. That was thirty-six years ago. There was no word of him in all that time—I always wondered why. I thought maybe he’d spent part of that time in suspended animation, or there was a database error—I don’t know. I tried to ask him on Jomark, but he discouraged any questions about his past.” 

“Of course he did,” Mara muttered. 

“I’m not sure he even knows what happened. The past seemed to confuse him sometimes, and he said things that didn’t make sense. I thought he’d suffered some sort of trauma when the Outbound Flight crashed in deep space—though he was always vague about that, too.” 

Mara crossed over to the data station. “Palpatine kept a DNA archive here on Wayland,” she said. “He might have saved a tissue sample.” Mara bypassed the security protocols with a few swift keystrokes and brought up a file. “Here it is.” 

A holo of Jorus C’baoth, taken forty years ago, gazed out benevolently from the screen.  _ Jorus C’baoth, born 4.2.112, Bortras. Human. _ Specific data related to the tissue sample in the DNA archive scrolled down on the right side of the screen. 

Further down, there was an attached file on the use of Jorus C’baoth’s DNA to develop a viable duplicate from the tissue stored in the archive. The report was brief and dry, but it judged the project a success. 

“He was made—born—here on Wayland,” Luke said. With all of Jorus C’baoth’s memories flash-imprinted into his clone. “I wonder if he even knows.” 

“It doesn’t matter,” Mara said. “Whether he’s a clone or the original artifact, he’s still a problem. If Palpatine…” She trailed off, her shoulders going stiff. 

“Mara? Is something wrong?” 

Ignoring the question, she hunched over the data station, punching in a series of commands.  _ What had she seen in the file?  _ Luke wondered, though he didn’t interrupt her again. C'baoth’s record vanished and a new file flashed up on the screen. 

A holo of Mara’s face materialized; younger, fuller, softer without the sharp edges the last five years had given her. Luke recognized the determined set of her jaw in the Mara he knew; the expression in her eyes—a sharp, unwavering focus—had never left her. Coruscant was listed as her home planet; her birthdate two years after his. As with C’baoth’s file, Mara’s basic biographical information was accompanied by an analysis of a collection of DNA samples housed in the cloning archive. 

“Fuck,” Mara breathed. All color had blanched out of her face, “Fuck. He took samples from me. They’re still in the archive.” 

“We’ll destroy them,” Luke said, putting a hand on her back. She leaned into the touch for a moment, before straightening with a quiet sound—a gasp. Her fingers flew across the keys, pulling up another subject file. 

Luke’s stomach plummeted when it appeared on screen. 

_ Luke Skywalker. Birth date unknown, Tatooine, Human. _ There were blank spaces in the record, and no official holo, only a blurry image Luke recognized from an old Imperial “wanted” file. 

“That’s impossible.” He gaped at the screen. “I’ve never given any tissue samples.” 

“Never? Not even to a local hospital on Tatooine?” 

“No, I don’t think so. No.” 

A few keystrokes, and the sample’s origin flashed up on the screen.  _ Collected by [redacted]: Bespin, 22.6.18 AFE. _ The day after he’d fought Vader on Cloud City. It implied a macabre series of events that Luke didn’t have the time to contemplate. His skin crawled. 

“We’ll destroy the archive when we take out the cloning chamber,” Luke swore. 

“About that—“ Han said from behind them. “We don’t have enough explosives with us. Chewie and Lando are working on an arrhythmic resonance scheme to blow out the power core—but it’ll take some time.” 

“There might be a self-destruct mechanism,” Mara said. “Palpatine didn’t like sharing his toys.” Her eyes flicked over to Luke for a second. 

“Yeah, sounds like him,” Han said. 

“It would be in the throne room on the upper levels.” She blinked, a crease appearing between her brows. Looking over a Luke, she continued: “That’s where C’baoth will be—the royal chambers.” 

“You sure about that?” Han asked.

“I can’t guarantee it,” Mara said, “but knowing C’baoth—” She looked to Luke for confirmation and he nodded. “That’s where he’ll be. He has a fetish for the old glory days of the Republic and a taste for finer things.” 

Han snorted. 

“I can find the self-destruct mechanism,” Mara said. Luke began to protest but she cut him off. “I’m going with you to face C’baoth regardless. You can’t stop me.” He opened his mouth and she placed a hand on his chest. “You can try. But you won’t succeed.” A dry smile touched the corner of her mouth. “I’m not going to let you face that bastard alone.” 

“Chewie or I could back you up,” Han said. 

“No,” they both responded simultaneously. 

“Alright,” Han conceded. He didn’t look happy about it. “I’ve just got a bad feeling about this.” 

“We all do,” Mara murmured. 

“Mara,” Han said, and she looked up at him, frowning. “Take care of him, okay?” 

“I will.” 

“Don’t get yourself killed, either.” 

“Noted, Solo.” 

Han turned back to Luke, clasping him on the shoulder. “May the Force be with you.” 

“Thanks, Han. Be safe.” 

He didn’t promise to return. 

* * *

The turbolifts to the royal chambers were guarded by a pair of stormtroopers that Mara dispatched quickly with a few well-aimed shots from her blaster. As they boarded the lift she pointed out that a posted guard was more evidence there was something worth protecting in the highest levels of the fortress. Whoever was in command hadn’t moved C’baoth into the command wing on the ground level, but they hadn’t left him entirely undefended either. 

She clicked her tongue derisively when the turbolift activated as soon as she tapped a series of letters into the control panel. “They haven’t changed in the codes in this place in over seven years,” she said as the lift began to rise. “Thrawn blocked my access codes on the  _ Chimaera  _ but he didn’t bother here.” 

With another contemptuous click of her tongue, she slipped behind him to check on the ysalamir frame strapped to his back. The ysalamir hissed as she ran her fingers along its side, a surprisingly loud dry rattle meant to warn off predators. 

He felt Mara’s hands go still on the frame. “You’re going to give him another chance, aren’t you?” she asked. 

Luke closed his eyes. “I have to try. Everyone deserves a chance.” 

“He’s not going to take it.” 

“Probably not. But if he did—there’s still so much he could teach us. He’s the last link we have to the Jedi. He knows more than anyone else about the command and how to release me from it. If we could take him to Myrkr, where he wouldn’t be a danger to anyone—”

Behind him, Mara made a soft sound of dismissal. “Did you ever find out how he established himself on Jomark?” 

Her question brought him up short. “No, I never did.” 

“I think if he’s clever enough to bargain with the Imperials and make himself the uncontested lord of a planet, then he’d find a way out. Or the Empire will come after him.” She was quiet for a moment as she tugged the straps on the frame, testing the tension. “He’ll go after your sister’s children again.” 

The cold that rushed through him following her words meant that he had to take a moment to breathe and recenter himself. It wasn’t the dark side—he was still safe inside the ysalamir’s bubble—but pure anger and fear. It took him a few moments—and measured, deep breaths, his eyes fixed on nothing in particular—to wrest control back again. 

As he centered himself, Mara finished her inspection of the ysalamir and moved to stand beside him. He watched her as she checked the blaster at her hip, the knife in her boot, and then, with an expert flick, the release on her holdout; his gaze lingered on her wrist, the one he’d broken. 

“We wouldn’t have to face him now if I’d let you kill him on Jomark,” Luke said. “I’m sorry.” 

Mara snorted as she slid the holdout home. “None of that. No more apologies. Remember, you’re not the sole reason the galaxy turns, Skywalker.” 

“I remember,” he said softly, thinking of her silhouetted against the blue streaks of hyperspace, her bare skin warming under his hands. 

She took a breath to respond just as the doors to the turbolift slid open and he never got to hear what she would have said next. Without speaking, they moved apart, pressing against the walls of the turbolift on either side of the door. After waiting a beat for blaster fire that never came, Mara stepped out of the lift into the apartments and signaled for him to follow her. 

There were no guards in the royal chambers and the entire floor had the hollow feeling of a place regularly maintained by cleaning droids but absent of the presence of living beings for many years. Though most of the rooms were empty and unused, they found signs that C'baoth had been occupying the apartments. A bedroom and dining room had been used recently, and the meditation room was lined with the red woven mats and candles C'baoth favored. 

C’baoth wasn’t in any of the rooms. 

“The throne room,” Mara said. “Palpatine always insisted on a chamber where he could hold audiences or strike fear into the locals. He…” She trailed off, caught in some line of thought she didn’t articulate, and then shook her head as if to displace a memory. “Back to the lift. There’s nothing for us here.” 

Luke noticed the way her gaze swept through each room as they passed through it, despite the fact that they’d cleared the entire level only minutes before. They were both so spun up they were wary of the very shadows draped in corners of the royal chambers. Mara’s hand traced her blaster almost instinctively as the turbolift rose; Luke felt for the lightsaber that hung at his hip. They were silent until the lift came to a halt with a quiet hiss. 

“Ready?” Mara asked, and when he nodded she pressed the door release. 

Luke stepped out of the turbolift into one of his nightmares. The vast black dome of a natural cavern arched overhead, illuminated by the glimmering lights of a holomap of the galaxy, hovering in the empty space. A narrow catwalk crossed through the starscape like a bridge, leading to a platform above an abyss that dropped into darkness at the foot of a dais topped with a familiar curved throne. Suspended above the dais was another network of catwalks, running parallel to the edge of the platform. His footsteps echoed through the silent hall as he stepped out onto the metal grating of the bridge that hung over the natural chasm between the turbolift shaft and the dais. 

This was the room where he'd found Mara's lifeless body in the vision he’d had on Coruscant. He’d killed her here, under a spray of counterfeit stars, giving into the command at C’baoth’s bidding. Beside him, Mara's face was pale and strained, but free of the shock he felt; she was seeing the past, not haunted by a possible future. 

Was it a future he made possible by bringing her here? 

“Welcome, Apprentice Skywalker.” 

Luke jerked as C’baoth’s voice rang through the chamber, sonorous and commanding. The Jedi master stepped around the dark bulk of the throne and glided to the center of the dais—as though he had been waiting there, expecting them. In spite of the ysalamiri. C’baoth must have known more about what was going on in the mountain that evening than the Imperial commanders who controlled the fortress. 

“Welcome, Mara Jade.” C'baoth smiled, his weathered face creasing into lines of pleasure. “I knew you would be coming to me tonight. Everything has been prepared for your arrival.” 

_ Run. _ Some instinct deep inside him screamed.  _ Run, run, run. _ He’d known he was walking into a trap—even without the Force, even back on Coruscant. He’d been here before, he thought with a sickening wave of recognition. A throne room like this one, a power-mad Force-wielder, the life of his loved ones hanging in the balance—his fate a twisted ouroboros. 

Once again, he’d believed it was his duty—his fate—to stand face to face with the thing he most feared. But now, standing before C'baoth, he was faced with his own recklessness; he planned to confront the most powerful force user in the galaxy with his own abilities muffled by a ysalamir and hobbled by the compulsion in his own head. 

At the very least he should have insisted that Mara stay back on Coruscant, in spite of the vague sense that he couldn’t face C’baoth without her, in spite of the selfish urge to keep her by his side.  _ Selfish, so selfish. _

She was near enough that he could reach out and pull her close. Her blaster was drawn and ready; if she stayed within the ysalamir bubble she could get off a shot that C’baoth wouldn’t be able to predict or prevent—as far as Luke knew. 

_ Everyone deserves a chance, _ he’d told her. If they could walk out of the throne room without a fight, so much the better. 

“Master C’baoth,” Luke began, “you’re not well.” He continued to cross the catwalk, despite the ice-cold dread trickling down his spine. “You need help.” 

C’baoth waved a hand. “The infirmities of old age are nothing to the Force. I don’t need your help, Apprentice Skywalker. You need mine.” 

_ “Can _ you help him?” Mara’s question cut across the hall. “Because if you won’t help him then you’re wasting our time.” 

“Of course I can,” C’baoth said. He waved a dismissive hand through the air, as though brushing away any objections; as though it had always been a simple matter that barely merited his attention. 

It brought Luke to a full stop at the edge of the catwalk, as though his limbs had abruptly refused to obey him. It felt like a band had tightened around his lungs, and for a moment he had to concentrate on taking in a breath.  _ C’baoth knew all along—he let Luke live like this for months—he put Mara in danger— _ he felt Mara’s hand press against the back of his and he focused on her touch, on the warmth of her fingers against his skin. Another breath.  _ Allow the rage to flow away, down his body and through the soles of his feet. _

He took another step, onto the platform below the dais. Mara moved away again, fanning out along the edge of the platform and covering his right side. 

“I want your help, Master C’baoth,” Luke said. “Really, I do.” He took another step toward the dais. 

“If he actually means what he says about helping you,” Mara said. “And he isn’t jerking you around again.” 

“Mara Jade,” C’baoth said, shaking his head, voice thick with condescension. “You have so little faith in me.”

“You lied to her!” The words burst out of Luke before he could think to check himself. “You lied to both of us!”

C'baoth chuckled like an indulgent parent amused by a child's temper tantrum. 

_ Appeal to his vanity, flatter him. Quickly, before his mood shifts. _ “Master C’baoth, I can’t turn to anyone else. I need your wisdom. Please. But you need professional help as well. Come with us, and we can work through this together, on Coruscant.” 

C’baoth smiled. “You misunderstood why I have brought you here, Apprentice Skywalker. I have chosen Wayland to be the birthplace of the new Jedi Order. Coruscant is the rotten core of the galaxy—the Jedi should have abandoned it generations ago. How could we ever rise to our true spiritual heights in such a moral morass? It’s no wonder the Order fell; such a fate was inevitable. That’s why I left Coruscant, you know. I knew that the Jedi could only thrive if they found a new temple, far from the concerns of lesser beings.”

“Master C’baoth, you’re not the same man who was chosen for the Outbound Flight—even though you carry his memories. You don’t have to make the choices he did. Make the right choice. Leave this place.” 

There was no flicker of recognition at Luke’s words, no sign that C’baoth understood what Luke was implying. He wasn’t aware of his own origins after all. 

“Your attempt at a distraction is ill-advised, Apprentice Skywalker,” C’baoth said coldly. “I will not be leaving Wayland. Now that you are here, I have everything I need to rebuild the Order.” 

He lifted his left hand, holding up a familiar cylinder, the metal dull and the distinct raised lines of the handle’s grip worn with use. It looked like— _ no, it couldn’t be _ —his lightsaber, his  _ father’s  _ lightsaber, the one that had fallen down the shaft on Cloud City, lost. His DNA hadn’t been the only thing scavenged that day on Bespin. C’baoth held it out to him. 

“Claim your place at my side, Apprentice Skywalker.” 

“This is pointless,” Mara snapped. “He’s insane.” 

C’baoth lowered the lightsaber, his expression darkening. "I will not tolerate your insolence any longer, Mara Jade. Continue to defy me and there will be consequences." 

"Really?" Her upper lip curled in disdain. "Go fuck yourself." 

"Silence!" Before Luke or Mara had time to react, C'baoth's hand shot out and lightning erupted from his fingers, cracking through the air like a whip and driving into Mara's shoulder. 

"Mara!" Luke shouted over her cry of pain as she jerked backwards, trying to escape the bite of the lighting. She slammed into the railing on the edge of the platform and fell to the floor, the blaster falling out of her lightning-numbed hand. Small purple shocks crackled up and down her arm. Luke leapt to her side, the ysalamir frame on his back protecting her from another strike. 

Dropping to the ground, Luke angled his body to shielded her body with his own as he eased her off of the ground, leaning her against the railing. Her jaw was set and she was shaking as he carefully peeled back the high collar of her flight suit. The burns weren't as bad as he expected, but they looked raw, the skin red and tender. 

Luke swore under his breath. He couldn’t use the Force to heal her or soothe her pain—as much as he wanted to tear away the frame and reach for that miraculous reserve of power—he couldn’t risk it. Stroking her cheek gently, he wished he could pour his own strength into her through his fingertips. 

"Leave her be, Apprentice Skywalker. She called this punishment upon herself."

"No," Luke bit out. "Mara didn't deserve that." She didn't deserve any of this, no matter what she might believe. 

C'baoth scoffed. "Mara Jade is a lost cause. Weak and insolent. Too tainted by her former master's aberrant training. I warned you against forming an attachment to those with lesser powers,” C’baoth said, his mouth twisting in distaste. “I knew her former master, you know. As a Sith, his execution was necessary, though losing such a brilliant mind to the dark side was a great loss. I regret it.” 

Mara took a deep shuddering breath and grabbed hold of one of the railing bars, heaving herself upward. Luke wrapped an arm around her waist to steady her until she could stand on her own. She was watching C'baoth through slitted eyes, her mouth a thin white line. 

“We were colleagues, and I was under the impression that we were friends,” C’baoth continued, unconcerned. “Perhaps we were. He gave me this post, here, on Wayland. The things he left behind—fascinating.” 

“He left me everything I needed. Everything.” C’baoth’s eyes glittered as he flicked a pointed glance at Luke, and then turned his attention back on Mara. "If you desire her company so much, Skywalker, don't concern yourself. Another arrangement has been made." 

A figure moved from the shadows as if from the wings of a stage; the final player in a theatrical production that C'baoth had constructed. She drifted lightly across the dais, the soft hood attached to her tunic falling away as she reached C’baoth’s side, revealing a face that was a mirror version of Mara’s. 

The clone was dressed in white, from her tunic to her tabard and obi—even her boots were made of pearl-white leather. Her skin, having never been touched by the sun, was a pale chalky shade, free of the light freckles that dusted Mara’s fine cheekbones. A lightsaber hung from her belt; the thin cylinder plain and unadorned, though it had been polished until it gleamed silver-bright. 

She had the same expression on her face that he’d seen on Mara’s face in one of his dreams, the dream in which mind was held tight in Palpatine’s grip. Vacant, docile. Blank. 

A lock of hair had worked its way loose from the neat plait that hung down her back and drifted around her face; a note of imperfection that made the clone seem more human, her empty expression even more unsettling. 

“So you see, Mara Jade, how easily you can be replaced.” 

Mara made a choked sound beside him. Her face had gone slack with shock, all color drained away. Luke reached for her, catching hold of her hand and holding it tight. 

“No,” Luke said. “You can’t replace a person. You can’t replace Mara.” 

“You asked me for my help in freeing you from the compulsion that Palpatine embedded in your head. The simplest solution was always in front of you, Skywalker. Give in to the command and you will be free.” His eyes flicked to the ysalamir frame on Luke’s back. “Put aside your shields and give yourself to the Force.” 

“No.” 

“Her replacement will be less troubled then Jade is, I assure you. Less...damaged. A worthy partner for an heir to our new Order.” 

“No. Never.” 

There was a moment of silence. 

“Very well, then,” C’baoth said softly. Luke’s old lightsaber had disappeared into his cloak and a small cylinder flashed in his hand.  _ A remote switch—? _ Before Luke had time to take in the device, C’baoth pressed the button, and deep within the mountain came a distant booming sound, distorted by the layers of rock. It was the sound of a series of explosions, far beneath their feet in the fortress below. 

“What was that—?” 

C’baoth lifted his other hand and made a gesture as though pulling at an invisible cord hanging in the air in front of him. Rock crumbled away from the cavern above, coming down like hail in a thick shower of stone. Small pebbles pelted against Luke’s skin; larger boulders smashed to the floor around them. 

Luke caught Mara’s arm and pulled her toward him. For an instant, she resisted, then a rock grazed the side of her head and she flinched toward him. He threw himself over her, bowing his body over hers. She shouted something he couldn’t make out over the roar of stones raining down on their heads and crashing against the floor around them. 

Luke heard a crack as something smashed into the frame on his back and with no more warning than the snapping of small reptilian bones, the Force flooded his senses, rushing into him like an ocean; swamping him with long-suppressed sensation. Mara gasped and stiffened beneath him. 

The ysalamir was dead.  _ All  _ the ysalamiri were dead. 

The rain of stones ceased abruptly. 

And with that, the command returned. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE


	11. Chapter 11

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The words hammered against the inside of his head, thundering, relentless, tearing away every hard-won scrap of peace. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

Luke lurched away from Mara, twisting around to pull the frame off his back—as if visual confirmation would somehow change the fact that he already knew the ysalamir had been killed by the rockfall. The poor creature was nothing but a mangled wreck of skin and sinew. 

He let the frame drop onto the rubble at his feet. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

Staggering toward Mara, he tore his lightsaber from his belt and thrust it into her hands. She flipped the handle, jamming it up against his chest. The fingers of her left hand dug into his shoulder, holding him in place, her thumb hovering above the activation button. As though she’d connected a circuit, an uncomfortable buzzing pressure hummed through his head, a discordant note under the pounding of the command. This close he could see the blood matted in her hair where a stone had struck her in the rockfall, the scrapes on her face, and a bruise forming on her chin. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The command was like an alarm going off in his face, urging him into action.  _ You’re faster than her, _ it told him, and he could see his next move like a series of holoshots flickering in front of him: snap her wrist and let the lightsaber drop, then, while the pain distracts her, twist her around and wrap a hand around her neck—

_ No, no.  _

Her eyes locked onto his face. She didn't flinch when he met her eyes, but something flickered under the surface. "I don't want to kill you," she whispered, as if she hadn't meant to speak the words aloud. The tip of the saber's handle dug into his chest with enough force to bruise. 

He couldn't do that to her. Luke grasped desperately for the pattern the C'baoth had taught him; weaving a shield, a bulwark, against the command screaming in his head. The barrier was a thin, flimsy thing, but it was enough—just enough—to keep the compulsion from taking over his body. 

“I’m in control,” he choked out.

“I know,” Mara said softly. “You would have snapped my neck when the ysalamir died if you weren’t.”

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. “I don’t know how long I can hold out.” Underneath the throbbing of the command, the dark side was so distinct that it was almost a physical presence, a dark, churning cloudbank hanging over their heads. 

“You need to go—get out of here,” Mara said, glancing up at C’baoth. She let go of Luke and stepped back, lowering the lightsaber. “I’ll take care of—” 

She was cut off by the deafening screech of metal twisting and buckling beyond its limits. One of the upper catwalks that ran above their heads was torn from its moorings with a long rending sound and dropped down onto the walkway behind them. The structure shook and groaned, sagging under the weight. A large girder snapped off and fell, disappearing into the dark pit below. The field of holostars shivered, the quadrant above the walkway blinking out. 

C’baoth languidly swept his hand up again and Mara yelped, nearly dropping the lightsaber as her holdout jerked free of its holster on her wrist. Before she could snatch it out of the air, it flew out of reach, over the railing and into the deep pit on the other side. Her sidearm, which had fallen when C’baoth’s lightning had struck her blaster arm, slid across the floor and followed the holdout over the edge. 

“Bastard,” she muttered. 

“There must be another way out of here.” Luke looked around frantically. There had to be a passageway behind the throne, allowing C’baoth and the clone to make their entrances, but no doubt C’baoth expected and had prepared for a direct attack. Now that Luke had access to the Force, he could leap up onto one of the remaining catwalks overhead, pulling Mara behind him—

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. The command shuddered through him. C’baoth had removed the shields in his mind once on Jomark, and Luke had no doubt he would do it again. He was toying with them, like an anooba with a wounded jackrab, a speculative gleam in his eye behind his solemn expression. The clone stood like a marble statue beside him. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something flash in Mara’s hand—something she’d pulled out of a pouch on her belt. Lightning fast, she grabbed his wrist and snapped the object around it. The binders—she’d taken the binders from the  _ Falcon.  _ The second binder closed around his other wrist before he had time to react. She yanked him toward the guardrail, engaging the magnetic charge and sealing his bound hands to the rail. 

Luke stared down at his bound hands. As long as he was restrained to the guardrail, he wouldn’t be able to attack Mara. He could probably use the Force to break the mechanism in the lock—but it would take concentrated effort. She’d given him time—precious time—to concentrate on his shields. 

He sagged against the rail. “Thank you.” 

“Fight it,” she said. “Don’t let them win.” 

As she kissed him—pressing her lips to his in a fierce, fleeting kiss—he caught a sense of what she planned to do. 

As she broke away—“Mara,  _ no.” _ But she was gone, leaping up the steps of the dais, his lightsaber a green streak in the air as she charged toward C’baoth. 

C’baoth didn’t even flinch as she approached—he didn’t need to. The clone beside him sprung to life like a droid that had been switched on, her lightsaber a beam of pure white that met Mara’s lightsaber with the shriek of plasma against plasma. Mara staggered back. The clone landed a kick to her ribs, knocking her down the steps to the floor below. 

Luke jerked forward instinctively, the binders digging sharply into his wrists. Without sparing a glance for either him or C'baoth, the clone ran lightly down the steps as Mara scrambled to her feet, lightsaber at the ready. He should have been using the opportunity Mara had given him to work on shoring up his shields against the command, but he was transfixed by the duel waging across the throne room floor. 

“Look how she moves,” C’baoth crooned. The clone swept the white blade in a wide, showy swing that pressed Mara further back. “A perfectly engineered physical specimen, acting as a vessel for my commands. Palpatine was right to invest in the development of a race of clones—but as a Sith, his vision naturally fell short of what a _Jedi,_ with the full understanding of the Force, can accomplish.” 

Mara swung up her lightsaber and clumsily blocked a vicious strike that would have cut right through her. Luke recognized Shii-cho in the clone’s attack, with flashes of Makashi and Ataru—lightsaber forms blended and wielded with a master’s skill. C’baoth had poured all of the combat techniques of the old order into his puppet’s head; the extension of his will in another body. 

Mara couldn’t match her. The techniques she knew were mostly defensive, having only trained against remotes and droids and taught to view her lightsaber as more of a tool than a weapon. Like C’baoth, the Emperor had lied to her about her abilities and deliberately withheld skills she could have used to hold her own in a duel with a skilled opponent. 

“I still have much to thank him for,” C’baoth continued. “He showed me the way. How to implant commands in another mind, even a mind as strong as yours. That was just the beginning.” 

He gestured at Mara’s clone. “A sentient mind, re-formed and rebuilt in my own image. The complete domination of another being.” He smiled, wide and satisfied. “And this is just the start—Thrawn’s clones, waiting for the touch of my consciousness, sleep in the caverns below, ready to rise at my command. We can shape the galaxy into what it always should have been.”

“Master C’baoth, that’s—that’s—” It was the deepest perversion of the Force’s power. “Please, it doesn’t have to be like this—” 

He never finished his plea. On the floor below the dais, Mara ducked under another sweep of the clone’s blade, crouching low, her hand scrabbling against the ground. As she surged up again, she flung a handful of gravel from the rockfall into the clone’s face. Her double cried out and staggered backward, a hand frantically scrubbing at her face, only barely managing to block the series of savage blows that Mara rained down on her in blazing streaks of green. 

C’baoth’s hand flew up, a gesture mirrored by his half-blinded avatar. Luke could feel the burst of power, a blast that erupted from the clone’s fingers and slammed into Mara’s chest. Mara was thrown backward, her head hitting the floor with a sharp crack as she struck the ground. 

Luke’s lightsaber fell from her senseless fingers and rolled across the floor, coming to a stop at the base of the stairs. Luke felt her presence flicker in and out as she lost consciousness for a few moments. 

_ No, no, no, no.  _ He called her name, again and again, straining against the blinders. 

But she was still there—he could sense her awareness slowly seeping back, muddled, but strong, as she struggled to hold onto consciousness. Her fingers twitched and he could see her eyelashes fluttering against her cheek. An arm lifted, and with a low groan she slowly rolled to her side. 

The clone sauntered forward, her lightsaber swinging almost carelessly at her side. Her face was still a blank, emotionless mask. She reached down and jerked Mara up onto her knees, the white blade held at her throat. 

“Now, Mara Jade,” C’baoth intoned, “you will pay for defying me.” 

There was a tug in his head and Luke felt the touch of C’baoth’s mind. “No!” he gasped as he felt the defenses that C’baoth had placed in his head to ward off the command slipped away. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The binders clicked open and slid off of his wrists; before he could catch them they fell away, over the edge of the platform into the dark cavern below. 

_ Skywalker. You will obey me. _ C’baoth’s voice in his head. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. The Emperor’s voice, relentless. 

His father’s lightsaber—his first lightsaber—leapt out of C’baoth’s proffering hand and flew across the room into his. The hilt hit his palm with a satisfying smack and molded to his grip like it had been made for him, even though he hadn’t touched his old lightsaber since it had been lost at Bespin all those years ago. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. His body was in perfect accord with the command, striding across the floor toward his target. 

The clone stood behind Mara, unmoving, expressionless, the white-hot beam of plasma so close to Mara’s neck that the skin blistered and burned. As Luke approached, the clone dug her fingers into Mara’s hair, yanking her head up and baring her throat. Drying blood streaked the side of her face and her whole body shook as she panted, her wide eyes limned with tears of pain. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The clone let her lightsaber drop away as Luke reached for Mara.  _ Kill her—kill her slowly _ a voice hissed at the back of his head. Something tangled in his fingers when he tried to wrap his hand around her throat, his hand snagging on a thin cord hanging around her neck. She was still wearing Yona’s talisman. With a snarl, he snapped the chord and threw the pendant away. He could hear it skittering across the floor behind him. 

“Luke,” she implored, her voice rough. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. The hand wrapped around her throat began to shake. YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. He could feel her pulse under his fingers; her eyes never left his face. In his other hand, the raised lightsaber wavered. 

“No,” he screamed, staggering back. He sucked in a ragged breath, his whole body swaying with the effort of holding back the compulsion that raced through his veins. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

If he couldn’t stand his ground against the command he had to stop himself some other way—throw himself over the edge of the platform or fall on the blade in his hand. Take his own life, instead of hers. He should—

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

_ I will not kill her. I. Will. Not. Kill. Her.  _

“No,” he said again. A heavy silence followed his pronouncement. 

“If you cannot make a choice, it will be made for you,” C’baoth said. 

In answer, the clone raised her blade. Luke could sense the path the white lightsaber was about to take—slicing through Mara’s neck and killing her instantly—and he leapt forward again, catching hold of the clone’s wrist and twisting sharply. With a cry, she lost hold of the lightsaber and Luke snatched it out of the air. Mara fell aside as he whipped the lightsaber up and held it to the clone’s neck. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

The clone froze as he crossed the white lightsaber with his blue saber, pinning her in place. He pressed the white blade against her throat, the command throbbing through the buzzing drone in his head. 

Her face twisted in fear, the first expression Luke has seen her make since she stepped into the throne room. He’d seen that exact expression before. On Mara’s face. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

In his hand, the white lightsaber trembled. “I can’t—I can’t—” 

He couldn’t kill a woman with Mara’s face. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

He felt Mara move before he saw her; his sense of her muted by the odd hum in his head and the distant roar of the command. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her dart forward, the knife in her hand catching the light for a second before she reached the clone’s side and drove the blade into her side. 

Horror shuddered through Luke as the clone screamed, her wordless shriek an echo of the death cries he’d heard in countless visions. He looked away, unable to watch her face contort in pain as Mara drove the blade up under her ribs into her heart—he’d already watched Mara die too many times. He could still sense the clone’s life, as shallow and fleeting as it was, being snuffed out, and the strange, discordant hum in his head went quiet. 

He vaguely registered C’baoth’s enraged cry behind him but it seemed to come from a different world than the intense struggle that had played out in front of him. The clone collapsed, lifeless, onto the polished floor. Mara stepped back as the body hit the ground; her face drained of all color, hands visibly shaking. 

_ Unarmed, _ a cold voice in his head observed.  _ Vulnerable. _

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

_ No. I will not kill her.  _

When Mara had been at his mercy he hadn’t been able to kill her. He couldn’t even kill her doppelgänger. The command was only an echo, a dead man’s voice. If he couldn’t shield his mind against the compulsion, he could defy it. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

“Strike her down, Apprentice Skywalker.” 

Mara dropped to her hands and knees as if a great weight pressed down on her, her body shaking as she fought against C’baoth’s hold.  _ She can’t run from you. Do it now.  _

“Let. Her. Go,” Luke roared. 

A muscle in C’baoth’s face twitched as he met Luke’s glare, something cold and almost reptilian sliding behind his eyes. “As my apprentice, you  _ will _ obey my commands.”

_YOU WILL OBEY ME._ Luke could feel C’baoth worming into his mind, burning like acid through all the subtle pathways that Palpatine had woven through his consciousness. Too late Luke remembered the smokescreen Mara had taught him and made an attempt to construct a shield that would deflect C’baoth’s invasion of his mind, but the Jedi master brushed it aside like vapor. 

He couldn’t fight C’baoth. He’d welcomed the Jedi master into his mind on Jomark, giving him everything he needed to take control now. He could feel C’baoth taking over. It only took moments. Luke felt every defense draining away, his mind and body bound by C’baoth’s will. 

_ Skywalker. You are mine now.  _ He was nothing more a thing for C’baoth to command, a vessel for his whims. 

“Come to me,” C’baoth hissed. 

“Yes, Master.” The words ground out of Luke as he turned away from Mara, his gaze fixed on his master as he ascended the stairs and crossed the dais, falling to his knees at C'baoth’s feet. 

“That’s better,” C’baoth said sourly. 

His hand cracked across Luke’s face. “For your insolence. I will not tolerate any disrespect.” 

Though his face stung from the blow, Luke raised his head again, facing C’baoth. Waiting for orders. 

“Finish what you should have done on Jomark,” C’baoth said. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. 

“No,” Luke whispered. 

YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE. Palpatine’s rasping words returned, echoed by C’baoth’s cultured tones of command until the two blended into a roar in his head. YOU WILL OBEY ME YOU WILL KILL YOU WILL KILL MARA JADE YOU WILL YOU WILL KILL YOUWILLOBEYOBEY OBEYWILLKILLKILLMARAJADE

_ No. I will not kill her. I am Luke Skywalker. I am a Jedi. I am in control. I am in control. I am in control. I— _

The command was a storm, an unrelenting whirlwind in his head. Luke retreated deep into the center of his being, to the pure well of the Force within him, still as a calm pool of water. But the quiet didn’t last for more than a second. 

The maelstrom surrounded him, stripping away the flimsy remains of his shielding, shredding the edges of his mind. YOUWILLOBEYKILLMARAJADE YOUWILLYOUWILLKILLKILLKILL OBEYYOUWILLOBEYOBEYOBEY YOUWILLOBEYYOUWILLOBEYYOUWILLOBEY

It was too much. He was overwhelmed—lost, drowning underneath wave after wave of rage, beating him into submission, drowning—

Luke scrambled for some scrap of sanity.  _ I am—I am— _

_ You are no Jedi. You are nothing.  _

_ Nothing— _

Just then he felt a flicker at the edges of the storm—like light breaking through storm clouds. A silvery, moonlight-pale shimmer just beyond the screaming winds.  _ Luke. _ Mara’s voice, ringing across the tempest in his head clear as a bell. He reached out for her, for the soft gleam of her presence. 

YOU WILL OBEY YOU WILL OBEY YOU WILL OBEY—

_Luke,_ she called, her voice cutting through the chaos of the command. His sense of her wavered unsteadily for a moment, her presence ebbing as she fought her way towards him. Like light streaming across turbulent waters. 

_ How did the Emperor die? _ he heard her ask, as clearly as though she’d spoken in his ear. She’d asked the same question on Myrkr, long ago. 

The memory swam up out of the darkness: Mara sitting on the ground, blaster in her lap, the light of a small fire flickering across her face. Behind her, the trees swayed in a gentle breeze and unfamiliar constellations glimmered through the leaves. 

Except that it wasn’t a memory-—Mara had never looked at him like that on Myrkr. Her eyes were fixed on his without a hint of the anger and suspicion that had haunted her then. 

“How did the Emperor die?” she asked again. 

“Vader turned against him,” Luke said. “He lifted him up and threw him down an exhaust shaft. There was a massive blast of dark side energy—an explosion of power erupting from his body.” 

Mara shook her head, frowning. “That doesn’t help us with C’baoth. Unless you can toss him over the railing.” 

“C’baoth’s too powerful,” Luke said. “He’s a Jedi master, and I’m…”  _ Nothing, _ the dark side whispered from the shadows. The wind picked up, tossing the branches of the trees overhead and rustling through the undergrowth. This place—this chamber in his mind—wouldn’t be safe for much longer. 

“He lied to me about the Force, remember?” Mara said. “I think he lied to you, too.” 

She faded as she spoke, the edges of her body blurring, becoming translucent as the shelter of his memory began to deteriorate around them. The fire sputtered and sparked and the wind began to howl, raking through the trees and whipping twigs and leaves around the small clearing. 

“You don’t need him,” Mara insisted, “you’ve never needed him.” 

“I need you,” Luke shouted over the screaming gale. 

“You have me,” Mara called back, her face tense with concentration as she fought against the forces rendering her insubstantial, dragging her away from him. 

“Luke—let me in the way you let him in.” 

“Yes—” he gasped, and opened up his entire being to her. His mental shields were long gone, lost when C’baoth had invaded his mind, but he’d never welcomed her into his mind the way he had with C’baoth back on Jomark. He’d been too afraid of any mental connection between them triggering the command. 

_ Let go. Let her in.  _

Mara blazed into his mind like a wildfire, streaking through the pathways that the Emperor and then C’boath had burrowed into his mind. The tendrils of power that they had left embedded all through his psyche were burned away. Light and warmth flooded the small chamber in his head where Luke had retreated. He still could feel the command buffeting him but the center of his being was shielded by a silver glow—Mara, protecting him from the storm. 

_ Get him, _ he heard her snarl in his head.  _ Take him out.  _

Luke fell through the darkness into another memory—a long empty room materialized around him, a door in the far end, the wooden lintel carved with fish and other water creatures. Above his head, long planes of the sunlight set in the ceiling were clouded by the storm still raging outside. It was the solarium in the High Castle on Jomark. The command was an incoherent wail battering against the windows. 

He felt C’baoth’s presence moments before the man—or more accurately, a mental simulacrum of the man—came charging through the door. He looked wilder than Luke had ever seen him, a far cry from the controlled Jedi master that Luke knew. His eyes were wide, bright with malice and madness, lightning sparking along his fingertips. 

“Skywalker,” he roared. 

Fear shivered up Luke’s spine but he straightened and faced the Jedi master. Deep within him, he felt the pulse of Mara’s shield like an extra heartbeat. 

“You’re no longer welcome here,” Luke said. 

C’baoth threw back his head and laughed, a loud bark of laughter that bounced off the empty walls. “Do you think you can stand against me, Skywalker?” 

“Mara Jade—” C’baoth hissed her name, spittle flying from his lips as he ranted, “may have won a round. But I have ways to break back in. She may know a few weak, paltry tricks, but she can’t save you. She’s nothing more than Palatine’s cast off, a worthless bitch—” 

“Stop,” Luke snapped. “That’s enough.” 

C’baoth chuckled, a low, nasty sound. “I am Jorus C’baoth, Master of the Jedi Order. I do not take orders from you.” 

Slowly, he raised his hands. Luke could feel power building in the room, sense it like an electric charge humming through his body. The smell of something acrid filled the air.  _ Anger. Loathing. The pleasure of cruelty. The dark side.  _

Once again, C’baoth triggered the command, speaking entirely in his own voice this time. OBEYYOUWILLOBEY YOUWILLOBEYYOUWILL OBEYYOUWILLOBEY YOUWILLOBEYYOUWILLOBEY YOUWILLOBEY—

_ No.  _ There was no panic this time, only certainty. That well deep within him, sheltered by Mara’s shield, exploded outward in a bright burst of power. It was like a supernova, brilliant and uncontained. The shockwave slammed into C’baoth. The old man crumpled under the force of the blast, the light going out of his eyes as he fell. 

For Luke it seemed to spread out in slow motion, everything going clear and sharp. This was his mind; no one could take it from him. 

_ I am Luke Skywalker. I am a Jedi. I am free. _

* * *

“Luke.” 

Slowly, painfully, consciousness began to seep back in. The floor was cold under his back; his entire body was one deep ache. If he thought about it, he could feel every bruise, every scrape along his back where the rockfall had battered him. He didn’t think about it. 

A hand brushed across his forehead. A voice, calling his name. 

“Mm—mar—ah?” It came out more a jumble of syllables than a name. 

“Luke.” 

The world was a blur of dark and light when he dragged open his eyes, Mara gradually swimming into focus above him. Her face was streaked with blood and sweat, eyes glassy with exhaustion when they met his. The holostars flickered softly behind her, lighting up her hair in irregular flashes. 

A tremor ran through the fingers stroking at his temple. “You did it,” she said softly, gently pulling his head onto her lap. 

Luke took a shaky breath; felt for the compulsion that had been his constant companion for the last year. It was gone. He was free.  _ Free. _ His head was quiet, blissfully quiet. 

“Because of you,” he said. Lifting a hand felt as difficult as raising an X-wing though swamp muck—but just as critical. With great effort he managed to reach up and trace the line of her cheek. “You found me in the storm.” 

The first time he reached for the Force it slipped away like water through his fingers. Pressing his lips together, Luke pulled deep, drawing the Force to him. It was like dunking his face in a cool stream after a hot day, and Luke nearly laughed aloud at with joy as the Force rushed into him, pure and untainted. 

Mara sucked in a quick breath, her eyes widening as Luke directed the flow up his arm and into her. He guided it through body, tending to her concussion, knitting together the gash on her head, soothing the throbbing pain of the burns on her chest and throat. But he couldn’t sustain that swell of power for long—his focus broke, his hand dropping away. 

“C’baoth?” he asked. 

Mara looked past him, her mouth a grim line. “Alive. Barely.” 

“I need to help him.” 

Mara’s disapproval flashed through his head so sharply that he wobbled as he tried to rise, sagging back against her. They were still so entwined he felt her emotions as vividly as if they were his own. A link—a  _ Force bond? _ Luke blinked up at her, prodding at the places in his head that still felt like Mara. He could suddenly sense it all—the way her mind wove into his, the Force binding them together the way that it had bound him to the command. For the first time he understood the entire structure—no one could enter his mind without his permission again—and he knew how to unravel the bond. But for the moment, he let it be—let the connection between them sing uninterrupted through the Force. 

Nausea washed over him as he pushed himself up. Everything hurt. Mara wrapped an arm around him and together they managed to climb unsteadily to their feet and stagger over to C'baoth. With what remained of his fading strength, Luke sank down next to the fallen Jedi master. He reached out and grasped the old man’s hand, feeling the faint pulse of life under his fingers, fading fast. 

He could try and save the old man one last time—but no. Just—no. Not everyone could—or should—be saved. 

Luke let go of C’baoth’s hand and reached for Mara. They sat together by his side until the Jedi master died. 


	12. Epilogue

Leia told him where to find the bodies. 

A Noghri warrior guided Karrde through a set of passageways behind the royal apartments and up the stairs that led to the back entrance of the Emperor’s throne room. As soon as he stepped onto the lower platform below the dais it became obvious why they hadn’t used a turbolift. The walkway that stretched across the cavern to the turbolift shaft strained under the weight of a tangle of durasteel beams that had once been an overhead catwalk. The far end of the walkway looked on the verge of collapse. 

What had once been a stunning holomap of the galaxy flickered over their heads like a faulty bulb, an entire sector above the damaged walkway gone dark. Even damaged, the projector rig alone was immensely valuable, and Karrde made a mental note to have one of his men transfer the entire starscape to the  _ Wild Karrde _ before they left the planet. 

Sturm and Drang pulled sharply on the ends of their leashes, whining and straining. The vornskrs bolted free the moment Karrde unclipped their collars, claws clicking against the slick transparisteel floor. He had thought they might be useful in tracking down C’baoth, but the Jedi Master was already dead by the time Karrde made it up to the throne room. 

He’d arrived too late to have been much help, though Calrissian had been grateful for the manpower to secure the garrison below. It didn’t take much, after the Noghri and the local warriors had swept through. The commanding officer had been found, comatose, in his quarters after the fight; his subordinates claimed that C’baoth had done something to his mind—something no one could understand. It didn’t matter, in the end. Imperial rule on Wayland was over. 

And while Karrde had been busy helping Calrissan mop up in the garrison below, an entirely different battle had been going on in the throne room where he now stood. A charged feeling hung in the air, like the aftermath of a lightning strike. Strum and Drang prowled restlessly along the edges of the dais, hackles raised. There appeared to have been a small, localized cave-in above the lower platform, a crushed ysalamiri frame crowning a heap of rubble. 

Something caught his eye in the debris that lay scattered across the polished floor of the throne room, and he bent to pick it up. It was a wooden pendant, with simple but elegant designs carved into its surface. A pair of leaping fishes, a sunburst. He’d seen it once before—hanging around Mara’s neck after she’d rescued him from the  _ Chimaera.  _

From where he stood, he could see a dark sticky pool that stained the floor not far from the stairs. Two bodies had been laid out at the top of the dais, shrouded by a black tarp: an unstable Jedi master and a dead woman with Mara’s face. 

Solo was crouched near the bodies, though his gaze had gone distant as though he’d forgotten what he was doing before Karrde had entered the hall. His forearms were propped on his knees, his hand empty and loose between them. He looked up as Karrde reached the top of the dais, face dirt-streaked and worn-looking. 

“Thrawn’s dead,” Karrde told him. 

“Oh, thank fuck,” Solo said, rubbing his hands over his face. 

“He was defeated at Bilbringi. We’re still having it confirmed, but our sources say that Thrawn was killed in the battle. Pellaeon pulled his forces out and retreated to Imperial space.” 

“It’s over,” Solo concluded. He let his hands drop and stood. “For the moment, anyway.”

“It would seem so.” 

“Have you told Leia yet?”

“Not yet,” Karrde said. “I spoke to her before I received the comm. You can do the honors, if you like.”

“Thanks.” 

Karrde had last seen Leia helping her brother and Mara to the  _ Wild Karrde’s _ sick bay. They were both covered in dust and grime; Mara’s hands and face were caked in blood, not all of it her own. Exhausted but coherent, they gave Leia a brief sketch of what had transpired in the throne room. Leia had passed it along to him. 

“Luke and Mara came up here to look for a self-destruct mechanism—but—” Solo gestured down at the bodies. 

“It looked like you did an adequate job taking out the cloning center on your own,” Karrde said dryly. He could admit that he’d been impressed with Solo and Calrissian’s work in the fortress below. An explosion in the power core at the center of the cloning lab had destroyed half the cavern, and the remaining Spaarti cylinders had been fried in the overload. 

“That was mostly Lando and Chewie’s doing.” Solo waved a hand. “As for the self-destruct button—there isn’t one. Least not one I could find.” 

“Perhaps for the best,” Karrde murmured. The base itself could still be salvaged after the cloning center had been dismantled. 

He crouched beside the bodies and lifted up a corner of the tarp. Leia had warned him what to expect. The woman under the shroud had died swiftly and brutally. The vibroblade had been removed, but her chest was dark with blood. Otherwise flawless skin was marred by a series of tiny scratches and a raw red burn across her neck. He’d noticed a matching burn on Mara’s neck. 

Her face—her face was a perfect replica of Mara’s. It was hard to look at that face for long. There was something wrong—deeply wrong—in seeing those features drained of life, empty of the fire that sparked behind Mara’s eyes. Knowing that if the battle had fallen out differently, Mara would have been lying there instead of this simulacrum—and the thought that he could have been staring down at her lifeless body instead was one he didn’t care to dwell on. 

It took either a great self-loathing or a great strength of will to strike down someone who looked just like you. Or perhaps it was a little of both. It was a shame, in a way—a waste—what would the galaxy have been like with  _ two _ Mara Jades? 

He wanted the story again, from Mara’s lips, when she and Skywalker had recovered. How one struck down a Jedi master as powerful as C’baoth was knowledge worth knowing. Karrde had underestimated Luke—and Mara—in the past; he would never do so again. 

He let the shroud fall from his fingers. 

* * *

He found Mara and Luke in the med bay on the  _ Wild Karrde. _ Their injuries hadn’t been serious enough for immediate treatment in a bacta tank, so the  _ Karrde’s  _ medic had taken his kit down to the garrison to treat those wounded in the attack and left them alone. 

As Karrde approached the med bay, he heard a soft laugh and Mara’s voice saying “—make it up to me later.” He couldn’t think of a time that he had ever heard Mara laugh like that, her voice intimate and affectionate. 

She was perched on the edge of a medical bed, one leg folded under her and the other braced on the ground. The blood and grit had been cleaned from her face and hands. Bandages wrapped across her chest and around her right shoulder under the sleeveless undershirt she wore, the edges of the bandage damp with bacta gel and numbing agents. Another bacta patch covered the side of her neck. A lightsaber—little more than a simple cylinder with a switch on its side and a few thin lines etched on its surface to serve as a grip—hung from her belt. Another two lightsabers lay on a side table. 

Luke was sitting on the other side of the bed, his back to Mara as she methodically applied bacta patches to a mass of darkening bruises across his shoulders. He looked up as Karrde entered and offered a weak smile. Mara kept her eyes on her work, patching up her—whatever they were to each other. 

As she reached for the bacta salve, she gave him a quick glance before returning to her work. “You went up to the throne room, didn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question. 

“I did. I found this.” He held out the pendant. “A good luck charm?” She didn’t seem the type to rely on superstition. 

“No,” she said, taking the pendant from him. “A gift.” She looked down at the carving for a long moment before tucking it away in a pocket. “A memento.” 

Perhaps she’d share the story one day; perhaps she wouldn’t. He crossed his arms, leaning back against the doorframe. 

“You saw the—bodies?” She didn’t meet his eyes. 

“I’ll arrange to have them destroyed.” The bodies would be incinerated as soon as possible—if the destruction Solo and Calrissan had wrought in the cloning center hadn’t knocked the facility's incinerator offline. If it had, he could make other arrangements. 

“I wish she hadn’t died,” Luke said.

Mara's jaw tightened but she didn’t look up from the bandage she was carefully applying to his shoulder. 

“I don’t blame you for defending yourself,” Luke said. He reached back and brushed her knee with his hand. “It’s just—a shame that she never had a chance to be anything more than C’baoth’s puppet. She didn’t have to be our enemy.” 

“Maybe not,” Mara said, “but she  _ was _ a weapon.  _ His _ weapon.” 

“I know.” He rubbed his thumb in circles over her knee. 

“It’s better not to leave an enemy at your back,” Karrde said. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Luke said with a wry smile.

“I understand that C’baoth was one of your people,” Karrde said, “are there any particular rites that need to be performed?” 

“Cremation was traditional,” Luke said. After a moment’s thought, he continued. “I’d like to say a few words. For both of them.” He sighed, looking lost for a moment. “I knew C’baoth was in league with Thrawn—even if I didn’t know the extent...I should have stopped him on Jomark—” 

_ “Skywalker,” _ Mara said sharply. 

Luke shook his head with a rueful chuckle, letting it drop between his shoulders. 

“I’ll see to it,” Karrde said. 

Mara tapped Luke’s arm to signal that she’d finished with the bacta patches, and he craned his neck around to kiss her before toppling slowly onto his side and curling his legs up onto the bed with a groan. Karrde saw Mara’s eyes flick in his direction, as though he’d caught her doing something far more scandalous than accepting her lover’s affection. Ducking her head, she busied herself with cleaning up the medical supplies strewn across the bed. Luke appeared to drift off as soon as his eyes fell shut. 

Karrde expected Mara to leave the bed as soon as Luke was unconscious and join him in the hall or in his office where they wouldn’t disturb the Jedi, but she didn’t move from her place at Luke’s side, and neither did Karrde. 

“Aves sent a comm from Bilbringi,” Karrde began, and told her what he knew of Thrawn’s defeat and the New Republic’s victory. For a few moments, it felt almost like a normal daily debriefing, the kind they might have in his office over a caf, Mara asking sharp, observant questions as he laid out the reports he’d collected from his network. 

“Now that our engagement at Bilbringi is over, the  _ Wild Karrde _ will follow the Solos back to Coruscant. Ghent’s waiting for us, and I don’t intend to let the Smuggler’s Alliance efforts in the battle go uncredited.” 

“You’re going to keep it going,” she said, lifting an eyebrow. 

“I am. We’ll need a more formalized relationship with the New Republic for the Alliance to be effective, but I think it’s worth pursuing.” 

Mara nodded. “You’d need someone posted on Coruscant to facilitate that agreement.” 

“I was thinking of keeping Ghent in place to—” He stopped as she shook her head. 

“Not Ghent,” Mara said. “He can’t run the Smuggler’s Alliance.” 

“I wasn’t planning to leave him in  _ charge,” _ Karrde said. 

“You need someone who can communicate with both sides. Play politics and keep the smugglers in line.” 

“I’m not going to stay on Coruscant—” 

“I want it,” she said, cutting off his argument. 

_ “You _ want it? Why?” 

Her gaze drifted back over to Luke. “I need to see something through.” 

_ Of course. _ Karrde bit back an instinct to respond with a droll comment of some kind—he had known this was coming. The signs had been there since she’d pulled Skywalker out of deep space. Mara had gravitated toward the Jedi with a single-minded focus that had seemed inexplicable at the time—even when he was trying to kill her. Whatever had been going on between them during the  _ Chimaera _ mission wasn’t just a fling that she needed to get out of her system. And whatever had happened in the throne room had cemented that bond. 

Losing Mara to Skywalker was a blow. A great loss for the syndicate, naturally—it was going to be difficult to replace her. At the very least the Smuggler’s Alliance post would keep her connected to the syndicate and part of his circle of contacts. She might even make something of the post, if she could manage to convince the New Republic that the Smuggler’s Alliance had value beyond the Thrawn campaign. It wasn’t the solution he expected, or the result he wanted—but it had its benefits. 

His gaze drifted to the lightsaber hanging at her belt. He wasn’t blind to the advantages of having a connection—a friend—in Skywalker’s Jedi Order. There was no doubt in his mind that she would excel at that path, if she chose it. 

_ Mara Jade, Jedi Knight.  _

_ Yes, _ Karre thought, that was something he wanted to see. 

“We’ll travel back to Coruscant on the  _ Karrde,” _ Mara said, the look in her eye daring him to question her use of “we.” 

Karrde inclined his head. “I’ll let Leia know. As soon as she’s done turning Tantiss into a New Republic stronghold.” 

They exchanged sardonic expressions; a smirk, a lifted eyebrow. He would miss her. 

“You should rest,” he said, making no further comment on the way she was practically swaying with exhaustion. 

There were plenty of things to do before they left Wayland, and time for Mara to recover from her ordeal. When he checked the med bay a few hours later, he found them both asleep, Mara draped half over Luke, her head on his chest. 


End file.
